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10+ Best Video Production Proposal Examples & Templates [Download Now]

Video Production Proposal

Video production proposal examples & templates, 1. printable video production proposal template, 2. film project proposal template, 3. sample filmmaking grant proposal, 4. documentary film proposal template, 5. video project film proposal, 6. simple proposal template pdf, 7. documentary film proposal example, 8. film and video production template, 9. documentary movie proposal sample, 10. multimedia project proposal template.

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How to Create a Production Company Business Plan [FREE Template]

H ighly successful video companies start with a strong production company business plan. Whether your company has been around for a while, or you’re a freelancer ready to take your services to the next level, this post will provide you with actionable strategies for success to compete more effectively right now.

It all beings with formulating the business plan that will get you where you want to go. If you don’t have a business plan, don’t worry. We provide a  free business plan template below and will walk you through it. 

Step by step.

• Production Company Business Plan
• The Executive Summary
• Perform a Video Company Self Assessment
• How to Get Started
• Financing a Video Production Company
• Marketing Plan
• Day to Day Operations

Freebie: Business Plan Template for Video Production

Download your FREE printable business plan template for your video production. Just enter your email address and we'll instantly send it to you!

business plan template

1. what is a production company business plan.

Essentially it's a tool for raising funds, creating a roadmap, or altering course and plotting out the next steps.

One purpose of any business plan to so convey to investors, or a bank, why they should put money into this business.

Think of creating a business plan you could bring to them

What does that mean?

It means you need this business plan for a production company to prove that you will make money. To prove it to you, but also to any investors.

After all, nobody invests to lose money. Or break even. So with that in mind, let's forge ahead into the actual writing of the business plan.

how to make a business plan

2. what is an executive summary.

Every business plan starts from the top down, with an executive summary.

What is that, exactly?

An executive summary is a short part of a larger proposal or report that summarizes the main points so the reader can become quickly educated on the whole document without having to read it all.

So it’s a detailed overview.

Of course, "executive summary" has a nice ring to it...

Your job here is to lay out the big picture of your plan. Some questions to ask yourself: Why do you want this business in the first place?

Similarly, what inspired you to start it? What's going to make it work?

Next, start to answer the questions your investors might have. Try getting into their head-space.

"Why would YOU invest in this business?"

You might want to write about the competition. The targeted demographic. Be specific here.

What need does your business fill? Which kinds of customers and clients are you targeting?

Think about your target market

Furthermore, what else sets you and your business apart?

Especially relevant is using concrete examples and not only ideas. Can you cite previous work you've done?  

This brings us to...

Your production companies competition

What does the rest of the field looks like. Your investor will want to know if they don't already.

What sets this company and this production company business plan apart from others?

Knowing the entire field of competitors you have is a good idea, even if it's a very long list.

Your production company business plan must factor in what else is being offered. That way you can adjust, and target a more specific niche.

Or, you can figure out what you can do better.

For example: what can you identify in your competitor's list of services that you know you can nail?

This is what your video company plan needs to convey.

Finally, remember to think of it from the investor's standpoint. How is this an opportunity for them?

how to create a business plan

3. why a video company self-assessment.

This step is easy to do, but hard to do well.

Can you take a good long look at your video production studio? With the intent to circle problems? Areas that need improvement?

The second part of this step might be easier. Find the areas where your video production studio can really shine.

In contrast, you don't want to elaborate on weaknesses in your video production company business plan. Rather, you want to identify them so you can find ways to address them.

You need to have answers to the questions these flaws might bring to the mind of your investors.

  You are not required to sing “Man in the Mirror” 

Then go beyond looking in the mirror.

Look back at the field before you.

This is a business plan for a production company. What opportunities exist for that?

Most of all, try and tailor this production house business plan to specific needs.

Here are a few methods of company self-analysis:

This is a way to identify changes in your industry, to target potential growth opportunities. The acronym stands for:

P olitical Factors

E conomic Factors

S ocial Factors

T echnological Factors

 P roduction company business plan would include a PEST

We've mentioned elements of SWOT:

W eaknesses

O pportunities

The one to focus in on here is threats. Don't assume everything will work out for the plan just the why you'd like it to.

Because it won't. Investors will know that. You should not only know it, you should expect it.

Most important of all: prove that you're prepared for whatever may happen.

Here's a cool way to approach your SWOT analysis. Try applying your strengths to your opportunities and see what kind of leverage you can create.

Then theoretically expose your weaknesses to your threats. Are you in trouble? Do you need to address something to better protect your company?

Think of this as planning for a battle. Therefore, you don't want to ignore cracks in the wall if your enemy is bringing a battering ram.

Business plan can benefit from SWOT

Strategy, structure, systems, style, shared values, staff, and skills.  The 7S model  was developed by business consultants  Robert H. Waterman Jr. and Tom Peters . It's also known as the McKinsey 7S framework.

The idea here is that your business needs these elements to be aligned and "mutually reinforcing". Let's go over each "S".

Strategy: How does this business plan to gain an advantage.

Structure: How do you divide the various operations of the company.

Systems: Procedure for measurement, reward and resource allocation.

Skills: the companies core and distinctive capabilities.

Staff: Human resources.

Style: Behavior patterns of the key groups like managers.

Shared values are in the middle of them all on the diagram. It's somewhat self-explanatory.

In theory, using these methods of self-analysis will help you a great deal. Due to them you'll know, and decide, all sorts of things about your production company.

The 7 S model of analysis

Start putting these ideas onto paper now! If you haven’t already…

Gentlemen, start your engines

4. how to get started.

A business plan for a production company must lay out how you will get started. This is also referred to as a "roll out plan".

How you engineer your beginning is critical to your cash flow. What do you need to get started?

And can you start at a sustainable level?

Will you open a physical office space right off the bat?

Overhead is a major cost. If this is more of a production house business plan then you’ll want to factor that in.

Do you have existing clients?

Equipment or gear already in place?

A video production business plan suggests that your focus will be on video production. Things like equipment will be critical.

In addition to considering this an entertainment production company business plan you may also want to focus on creative development.

How you want to focus effects how you want to phrase things. And it matters almost immediately.

START FEES YOU CAN AVOID

It's a good idea to propose that you start small.

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that you will scare away investors if you ask for too much up front, almost without fail they can tell if you are asking for more than it seems like you need.

It also throws into question how serious you are about sustaining success.

Which leads to the second reason.

It'll be much harder for you to sustain success if you ask for big upfront funding that you aren't sure you can earn back plus profit.

Let's say because you know of a few jobs you'll have early on, that you ask for less up front.

You'll be able to get rolling right away, earning back the initial investments and then some.

Above all you want to start off with easy wins.

Or as close to easy wins as you can get when launching or re-launching a video production business plan.

Seems like it would somewhat obvious not to ask for more than you can earn back...

Rather, it's a mistake people make all the time.

Speaking of which...

do have the capital?

5. financing a company.

Any business needs capital. As a result, you need a section where you lay out the cash flow for the production house business plan.

What kind of money do you expect to have coming in, and how much do you expect to be spending?

Make the budget, while also estimating how you'll be earning.

If you can't demonstrate this, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

Just pose like this and you’ll reassure any investor

You will want to get involved with an accountant at some point soon.

But remember, this is a business plan for a production company. So you may have a lot of costs coming at you early just to get started.

What is a marketing plan?

Your video production business plan is almost complete. Another section worth including would be one on marketing.

Here is a good additional resource on small business accounting .

You want to prove that business will be coming in, and not assume it will on faith alone.

Building a strong portfolio is a must. Consider again what niche you may be able to serve best. Find a solid "bread and butter" to start with.

Remember, good businesses expand when they need to. They don't bite off more than they can chew right out of the gate.

INVEST IN A GOOD WEBSITE

Do some research on how you’ll be building the best website for your product.

Get your production company a few social media accounts, and start trying to create a presence there. You'll need to find many ways to attract clients, and show your work.

Do some additional research on how to market a production company.

All this needs to find its way into the marketing section of your production company business plan.

what's your daily workflow?

7. day to day operations.

The day to day operations are a critical part of the plan. Have you visualized what the daily workflow will be?

Now is the time to do that. Who is going to be on your team, and how will it grow and change over time?

Determine what tasks will take priority each day, and how to best utilize your resources and finances.

This will be a key step in determining if your production company business plan is sustainable.

Ask yourself a few of the following questions:

How much time per day will you spend building your client base? What elements of each job will you tackle in-house? Which tasks might you outsource?

What equipment and gear do you own?

When will it need to be replaced and/or upgraded?

Are you going to hire anyone to start? Will they be full-time employees?

Will you hire independent contractors per project? How many, roughly?

As mentioned in the finance section, you need to know how you'll plan your reporting for taxes and your bookkeeping process.

These questions will help you start to determine what each "day at the office" will look like.

The clearer a picture you can paint here, the better.

Write a Business Plan

Get as specific as possible in each section of your entertainment company business plan. The more you know... right?

Now, let's get a little more advanced. In our next post we'll dive into writing a 4 part business plan. 

Up Next: Write a 4-Part Business Plan →

Project management for video creatives. tasks, file sharing, calendars and more..

Manage video production timelines, tasks, storyboards, shot lists, breakdowns, call sheets. Made for video creatives, new media and film.

Learn More ➜

1.1 CHAPTER TITLE HERE...

Short, actionable h3 phrase....

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Video Production Proposal Template To Close Deals

If you're a commercial video production company, our sample video production proposal template shows an example of how to pitch your video production services. Sign up for a free 14-day trial to get access to this video proposal template and start creating impressive, pain-free proposals today.

All Proposify proposal templates are 100% customizable.

What is included in this video production proposal template.

Everything you need to wow your potential clients! This video proposal template is entirely customizable and includes pre-written sections detailing the scope of the video project, deliverables like pre and post-production, output, and a sample contract at the end.

An Impressive Cover

As a videographer, you understand the importance of first impressions. This professionally-designed proposal cover is sure to catch your potential client's attention and make your pitch stand out.

It includes all the important information such as proposal name and ID, client name, date of delivery, and who on your team submitted the proposal. Everything on the cover is completely customizable, so it's easy to add your video production agency's unique style.

A Persuasive Executive Summary

What is it about your video production company your clients can't live without? Is it your talented roster? Your unique creative vision? Your impressive showreel?

Whatever it is, the executive summary is where you sell your prospects on why they should pick you over the competition.

This free video proposal template comes with a professionally-written executive summary to give you and idea of ideal length and tone. Whether you tweak what's there to make it your own, or write an executive summary from scratch, the choice is yours.

Scope of Services

There are a lot of pieces involved in developing a compelling video. This section of the free video production proposal template lists the services you're pitching to your client.

The template includes example service descriptions, but you can easily edit what's there to reflect your video production services.

How long do you anticipate this video production project to take?

For your potential client, an important part of choosing a corporate video production company is understanding the project timeline.

Use this example timeline to provide a detailed schedule that's easy for your clients to understand.

Our Video Team

Time to get those producers, directors, and editors out from behind the camera and put some faces to those names!

Your video production proposal isn't only for presenting the scope of the project and how much it will cost, it's also an opportunity to introduce the members of your video team who will be working with your new clients.

This section of our free video proposal template is ready for you to go into detail about your team's specific experience and expertise.

One of the most compelling elements you can add to a successful video pitch is the story of how you've already helped happy clients achieve their business goals.

Show off your past work with a case study, and prove to your potential clients why you're the best video company for the job.

Pricing Page

Now you've described the scope of your video project, introduced your team, and laid out a timeframe, you can tell your prospect how much your video services will cost.

The investment or pricing page of your video services contract is where you list and describe your fees to potential clients.

This sample video production quote includes Proposify's interactive pricing tables, so it's easy to present the financial portion of your video proposal. Tables are completely customizable so you can list all of your services, taxes, optional extras, and discounts.

Contract & Sign-Off

This video production contract template includes an example statement of work and terms & conditions to let your potential client know exactly what they're getting from you.

When clients are ready to sign, Proposify's free electronic signatures make closing the deal fast and simple.

Tips for creating a winning video production proposal

Crush your next video services pitch with these data-backed proposal tips.

Bring your proposal to life by embedding video.

It seems like a no-brainer, but including video in your proposal is an easy way to make sure your pitch stands head-and-shoulders above the competition.

It's not just for aesthetics, either. Some companies see up to a 196% boost in close rates for proposals that include video.

Whether it's a showreel, client testimonial, or a personalized video message to your potential client, it's simple to embed video from any platform in this free video production proposal template. Everything is online, meaning there are no size limits to slow you down, and no large files to get stuck in your clients' inbox.

Using esignatures for sign-off on your video production contracts can significantly increase success rates

Esignatures are the modern way to close new business. They're fast, secure, and your new videography clients can sign from anywhere, on any device.

They can also increase close rates by 465% , and help deals close up to 60% faster . Proposify's free esignature tool is included on this free videography services agreement.

Increase your close rate when pitching videography services by including images in your video production proposals.

We don't need to tell you about the power of imagery–you're a videographer!

But did you know that images bring far more than visual appeal to your sales docs. They can also help increase your close rate by up to 26% .

This video production proposal template comes complete with placeholder images and brand colours that are easy to switch out for your own content that matches your commercial video production company's style.

of Proposify proposals are created and sent in under an hour

of winning proposals close within 24 hours or less

of proposals are signed within 11 minutes of opening

Frequently asked questions about video proposal templates

What is a video production proposal.

A video production proposal is a document submitted by a video production company, videographer, corporate video production company, or video marketing agency to a potential client. Its purpose is to convince a potential client to purchase video services from a video company or professional videographer.

How do I write a videography proposal?

The best videography proposals are concise summaries of why your video services company is the best choice for your potential client. They are brief, convincing, well-written , and organized into sections for easy reading.

This example video production proposal template is pre-written with professional copy that's ready to use or switch out with text of your own.

What makes a good video production proposal?

A good video production proposal must have everything a potential client needs to make an informed decision. It's important to only include necessary information to ensure the proposal remains brief and compelling.

Some videography proposal must-haves include an eye-catching cover, a detailed scope of services, a project timeline, and a statement of work contract to protect your business.

Why not just send my video proposal as a PDF?

If you send your video production proposal as a PDF you run the risk of being totally in the dark as to what happens after you send your proposal. You have no way of seeing how your prospect is interacting with your quote and can miss important cues that could cost you the deal.

Proposify's online proposal software allows you to track and analyze exactly what happens once your videography proposal is in your potential client's hands. You'll have full visibility into how your quote is progressing from the moment you send to the second they sign.

How do I get a video proposal signed?

Electronic signatures are secure, legally binding, and with Proposify, completely free. They are the modern way to close new business. Wave goodbye to printing PDFs or Word docs just to sign with a pen, scan it, and send it back.

Every Proposify proposal template includes our free esignature tool.

Can I edit this video proposal template?

You betcha. All Proposify templates are completely customizable.

How many pages should a videography proposal have?

Our data which we collected from millions of proposals shows that the ideal length for a videography proposal is 11 pages which are organized into 7 sections.

The best video proposals are concise, organized, and include compelling design and visual content to make sure they are impressive to read and easy to navigate and understand.

How should I structure a video proposal?

First thing's first: Let your creativity shine and your unique style shine through by leading with an unmissable cover. Next, persuade your potential client that you are the best video production company for the job with a short executive summary of your services and the value you provide. Then be sure to include a detailed scope of services and timeline so everyone's on the same page with how long the project will take and what is involved. Introduce your team with an About Us section, and show off past wins with a case study. The all-important pricing section needs to have a clear breakdown of your fees. Finally, a statement of work contract will protect your business, and a place for your new client to electronically sign makes it easy to close the deal.

How do I send a video proposal to a client?

There are several ways to get a video production proposal to a client, some more efficient than others. The most efficient way is to make sure your video production quote is online and provide your prospect with a secure link. Then there's no need to download, and your proposal won't get stuck in your client's spam folder.

Why do I need a Proposify account to use this template?

When you sign up with Proposify , you get access to this template and every other template in our extensive template gallery . You can also upload all your company and client information so you can plug it into your proposals fast. After you sign up, you'll get access to all of our Team plan features for 14 days, and then have the option to choose your perfect plan.

And of course, you're able to select our no-cost plan, Proposify Free, whenever you like.

Why should I choose Proposify over the competition?

At Proposify, we know proposals. Our team has studied millions of deal docs over the years and understands what it takes to close deals. We are dedicated to delivering a solution that puts you and your team in control of the closing process. From template and content management to analytics and reporting, you’ll have consistency and visibility across your entire sales team and cycle.

Use this free video production proposal template to dominate your deals.

Grab this free, customizable template now and get ready to crush your next videography services pitch.

Branding Proposal Template

For marketing agencies that specialize in branding services, this branding proposal template provides suggestions on how to format a successful branding proposal.

Marketing Proposal Template

Marketing agencies will benefit from this free project quoting template, saving them time when responding to RFPs and other new sales opportunities.

Learn why over 10,000 businesses love Proposify

Drag & drop library sections

Managing proposals is a breeze in Proposify. Save all your case studies, fees, images and team bios all in one central library.

Tag them, search them and drop them into your layout. Proposals just got... dare we say... fun?

Online previews & signatures

No more emailing big PDFs, printing and shipping proposals or faxing back signatures (ugh). Your client gets a branded, interactive proposal they can sign off electronically. No need for extra software or logins. Oh, and we tell you as soon as your client opens it.

Track everything

Keep a pulse on your the sales pipeline of your agency. Proposify lets you know your close rate, which sections of your proposals get viewed and for how long, and all kinds of insight into what goes into your most successful proposals so you can sell smarter.

Sync up your other apps

Proposals are just one part of your agency sales process. We tie together your other software, so you can import contacts from your CRM, auto create deals and generate invoices in your accounting software. We are regularly adding new integrations.

Customer Support to the Rescue

We understand that when you’ve got questions, especially when you’re on a tight proposal deadline, you NEED answers. Our customer happiness specialists are at the ready, armed with friendly, helpful, timely support by email or online messaging. We’re here to help, regardless of which you plan you’re on or if you’re just taking us for a test drive.

We Keep Your Data Safe and Private

When it comes to protecting your private information, we’ve got it locked down tighter than Alcatraz. We partner with Amazon Web Services, use 128-bit SSL encryption, and create daily backups. And we never, EVER disclose any data to third-parties without your permission. Rest easy, nothing’s getting out of here alive.

Ready to see Proposify in action?

Sign up for a custom demo to give Proposify a test drive and get all your questions answered.

How to write a business plan for a video production company?

Putting together a business plan for a video production company can be daunting - especially if you're creating a business for the first time - but with this comprehensive guide, you'll have the necessary tools to do it confidently.

We will explore why writing one is so important in both starting up and growing an existing video production company, as well as what should go into making an effective plan - from its structure to content - and what tools can be used to streamline the process and avoid errors.

Without further ado, let us begin!

In this guide:

Why write a business plan for a video production company?

• What information is needed to create a business plan for a video production company?
• How do I build a financial forecast for a video production company?

The written part of a video production company business plan

• What tool should I use to write my video production company business plan?

Understanding the document's scope and goals will help you easily grasp its structure and content. Before diving into the specifics of the plan, let's take a moment to explore the key reasons why having a video production company business plan is so crucial.

To have a clear roadmap to grow the business

Running a small business is tough! Economic cycles bring growth and recessions, while the business landscape is ever-changing with new technologies, regulations, competitors, and consumer behaviours emerging constantly.

In such a dynamic context, operating a business without a clear roadmap is akin to driving blindfolded: it's risky, to say the least. That's why crafting a business plan for your video production company is vital to establish a successful and sustainable venture.

To create an effective business plan, you'll need to assess your current position (if you're already in business) and define where you want the business to be in the next three to five years.

Once you have a clear destination for your video production company, you'll have to:

• Identify the necessary resources (human, equipment, and capital) needed to reach your goals,
• Determine the pace at which the business needs to progress to meet its objectives as scheduled,
• Recognize and address the potential risks you may encounter along the way.

Engaging in this process regularly proves advantageous for both startups and established companies. It empowers you to make informed decisions about resource allocation, ensuring the long-term success of your business.

To maintain visibility on future cash flows

Businesses can go for years without making a profit, but they go bust as soon as they run out of cash. That's why "cash is king", and maintaining visibility on your video production company's future cash flows is critical.

How do I do that? That's simple: you need an up-to-date financial forecast.

The good news is that your video production company business plan already contains a financial forecast (more on that later in this guide), so all you have to do is to keep it up-to-date.

To do this, you need to regularly compare the actual financial performance of your business to what was planned in your financial forecast, and adjust the forecast based on the current trajectory of your business.

Monitoring your video production company's financial health will enable you to identify potential financial problems (such as an unexpected cash shortfall) early and to put in place corrective measures. It will also allow you to detect and capitalize on potential growth opportunities (higher demand from a given segment of customers for example).

To secure financing

A detailed business plan becomes a crucial tool when seeking financing from banks or investors for your video production company.

Investing and lending to small businesses are very risky activities given how fragile they are. Therefore, financiers have to take extra precautions before putting their capital at risk.

At a minimum, financiers will want to ensure that you have a clear roadmap and a solid understanding of your future cash flows (like we just explained above). But they will also want to ensure that your business plan fits the risk/reward profile they seek.

This will off-course vary from bank to bank and investor to investor, but as a rule of thumb. Banks will want to see a conservative financial management style (low risk), and they will use the information in your business plan to assess your borrowing capacity — the level of debt they think your business can comfortably handle — and your ability to repay the loan. This evaluation will determine whether they'll provide credit to your video production company and the terms of the agreement.

Whereas investors will carefully analyze your business plan to gauge the potential return on their investment. Their focus lies on evidence indicating your video production company's potential for high growth, profitability, and consistent cash flow generation over time.

Now that you recognize the importance of creating a business plan for your video production company, let's explore what information is required to create a compelling plan.

Information needed to create a business plan for a video production company

Drafting a video production company business plan requires research so that you can project sales, investments and cost accurately in your financial forecast, and convince the reader that there is a viable commercial opportunity to be seized.

Below, we'll focus on three critical pieces of information you should gather before starting to write your plan.

Carrying out market research for a video production company

Carrying out market research before writing a business plan for a video production company is essential to ensure that the financial projections are accurate and realistic.

Market research helps you gain insight into your target customer base, competitors, pricing strategies and other key factors which can have an impact on the commercial success of your business.

In particular, it is useful in forecasting revenue as it provides valuable data regarding potential customers’ spending habits and preferences.

You may find that there is a growing demand for video production services from businesses that are looking to produce promotional content for their online channels. Additionally, you could discover that there is a potential market for producing educational videos, as more people may be turning to online learning platforms.

This information can then be used to create more accurate financial projections which will help investors make informed decisions about investing in your video production company.

Developing the marketing plan for a video production company

Before delving into your video production company business plan, it's imperative to budget for sales and marketing expenses.

To achieve this, a comprehensive sales and marketing plan is essential. This plan should provide an accurate projection of the necessary actions to acquire and retain customers.

Additionally, it will outline the required workforce to carry out these initiatives and the corresponding budget for promotions, advertising, and other marketing endeavours.

By budgeting accordingly, you can ensure that the right resources are allocated to these vital activities, aligning them with the sales and growth objectives outlined in your business plan.

The staffing and equipment needs of a video production company

As you embark on starting or expanding your video production company, having a clear plan for recruitment and capital expenditures (investment in equipment and real estate) is essential for ensuring your business's success.

Both the recruitment and investment plans must align with the timing and level of growth projected in your forecast, and they require appropriate funding.

A video production company might incur staffing costs such as hiring a camera operator, sound technician, lighting technician, and editor. They might also incur equipment costs such as renting a camera, lighting, microphones, and other necessary production equipment.

To create a realistic financial forecast, you also need to consider other operating expenses associated with the day-to-day running of your business, such as insurance and bookkeeping.

With all the necessary information at hand, you are ready to begin crafting your business plan and developing your financial forecast.

What goes into your video production company's financial forecast?

The objective of the financial forecast of your video production company's business plan is to show the growth, profitability, funding requirements, and cash generation potential of your business over the next 3 to 5 years.

The four key outputs of a financial forecast for a video production company are:

• The profit and loss (P&L) statement ,
• The projected balance sheet ,
• The cash flow forecast ,
• And the sources and uses table .

Let's look at each of these in a bit more detail.

The projected P&L statement

Your video production company forecasted P&L statement enables the reader of your business plan to get an idea of how much revenue and profits your business is expected to make in the near future.

Ideally, your reader will want to see:

• Growth above the inflation level
• Expanding profit margins
• Positive net profit throughout the plan

Expectations for an established video production company will of course be different than for a startup. Existing businesses which have reached their cruising altitude might have slower growth and higher margins than ventures just being started.

The forecasted balance sheet of your video production company

The projected balance sheet of your video production company will enable the reader of your business plan to assess the overall financial health of your business.

It shows three elements: assets, liabilities and equity:

• Assets: are productive resources owned by the business, such as equipment, cash, and accounts receivable (money owed by clients).
• Liabilities: are debts owed to creditors, lenders, and other entities, such as accounts payable (money owed to suppliers).
• Equity: includes the sums invested by the shareholders or business owners and the profits and losses accumulated by the business to date (which are called retained earnings). It is a proxy for the value of the owner's stake in the business.

Analysing your video production company projected balance sheet provides an understanding of your video production company's working capital structure, investment and financing policies.

In particular, the readers of your plan can compare the level of financial debt on the balance sheet to the equity value to measure the level of financial risk (equity doesn't need to be reimbursed, while financial debt must be repaid, making it riskier).

They can also use your balance sheet to assess your video production company's liquidity and solvency:

• A liquidity analysis: focuses on whether or not your business has sufficient cash and short-term assets to cover its liabilities due in the next 12 months.
• A solvency analysis: takes and longer view to assess whether or not your business has the capacity to repay its debts over the medium-term.

The cash flow forecast

A projected cash flow statement for a video production company is used to show how much cash the business is generating or consuming.

The cash flow forecast is usually organized by nature to show three key metrics:

• The operating cash flow: do the core business activities generate or consume cash?
• The investing cash flow: how much is the business investing in long-term assets (this is usually compared to the level of fixed assets on the balance sheet to assess whether the business is regularly maintaining and renewing its equipment)?
• The financing cash flow: is the business raising new financing or repaying financiers (debt repayment, dividends)?

As we discussed earlier, cash is king and keeping an eye on future cash flows an imperative for running a successful business. Therefore, you can expect the reader of your video production company business plan to pay close attention to your cash flow forecast.

Also, note that it is customary to provide both yearly and monthly cash flow forecasts in a business plan - so that the reader can analyze seasonal variation and ensure the video production company is appropriately funded.

The initial financing plan

The sources and uses table or initial financing plan is a key component of your business plan when starting a video production company.

It shows where the capital needed to set up the business will come from (sources) and how it will be spent (uses).

This table helps size the investment required to set up the video production company, and understand how risks will be distributed between the business owners, and the financiers.

The sources and uses table also highlights what the starting cash position will be. This is key for startups as the business needs to have sufficient funding to sustain operations until the break-even point is reached.

Now that you have a clear understanding of what will go into the financial forecast of your video production company business plan, let's have a look at the written part of the plan.

The written part of the business plan is where you will explain what your business does and how it operates, what your target market is, whom you compete against, and what strategy you will put in place to seize the commercial opportunity you've identified.

Having this context is key for the reader to form a view on whether or not they believe that your plan is achievable and the numbers in your forecast realistic.

The written part of a video production company business plan is composed of 7 main sections:

• The executive summary
• The presentation of the company
• The products and services
• The market analysis
• The strategy
• The operations
• The financial plan

Let's go through the content of each section in more detail!

1. The executive summary

The executive summary, the first section of your video production company's business plan, serves as an inviting snapshot of your entire plan, leaving readers eager to know more about your business.

To compose an effective executive summary, start with a concise introduction of your business, covering its name, concept, location, history, and unique aspects. Share insights about the services or products you intend to offer and your target customer base.

Subsequently, provide an overview of your video production company's addressable market, highlighting current trends and potential growth opportunities.

Then, present a summary of critical financial figures, such as projected revenues, profits, and cash flows.

You should then include a summary of your key financial figures such as projected revenues, profits, and cash flows.

Lastly, address any funding needs in the "ask" section of your executive summary.

2. The presentation of the company

In your video production company business plan, the second section should focus on the structure and ownership, location, and management team of your company.

In the structure and ownership part, you'll provide an overview of the business's legal structure, details about the owners, and their respective investments and ownership shares. This clarity is crucial, especially if you're seeking financing, as it helps the reader understand which legal entity will receive the funds and who controls the business.

Moving on to the location part, you'll offer an overview of the company's premises and their surroundings. Explain why this particular location is of interest, highlighting factors like catchment area, accessibility, and nearby amenities.

When describing the location of your video production company, you may want to highlight the local access to a variety of resources that could benefit your business. You could point out the potential to tap into a large pool of creative talent that may be available in the local area. Additionally, you may want to emphasize the potential for easy access to a wide variety of filming locations, as well as potential tax incentives that could be available. All of these elements could be attractive to a third-party financier.

Finally, you should introduce your management team. Describe each member's role, background, and experience.

Don't forget to emphasize any past successes achieved by the management team and how long they've been working together. Demonstrating their track record and teamwork will help potential lenders or investors gain confidence in their leadership and ability to execute the business plan.

3. The products and services section

The products and services section of your video production company business plan should include a detailed description of what your company sells to its customers. 

For example, your video production company might offer customers video production services such as filming, editing, and animation; video marketing services such as creating and promoting videos for social media platforms; and video consulting services such as helping clients to develop a video strategy. These products and services can help customers to create content that is engaging and tailored to meet their needs, while helping them to reach new audiences and grow their business.

The reader will want to understand what makes your video production company unique from other businesses in this competitive market.

When drafting this section, you should be precise about the categories of products or services you sell, the clients you are targeting and the channels that you are targeting them through. 

4. The market analysis

When outlining your market analysis in the video production company business plan, it's essential to include comprehensive details about customers' demographics and segmentation, target market, competition, barriers to entry, and relevant regulations.

The primary aim of this section is to give the reader an understanding of the market size and appeal while demonstrating your expertise in the industry.

To begin, delve into the demographics and segmentation subsection, providing an overview of the addressable market for your video production company, key marketplace trends, and introducing various customer segments and their preferences in terms of purchasing habits and budgets.

Next, shift your focus to the target market subsection, where you can zoom in on the specific customer segments your video production company targets. Explain how your products and services are tailored to meet the unique needs of these customers.

For example, your target market might include small businesses. These customers may be looking for an affordable way to create promotional videos to market their products or services. They may also be seeking assistance in making short videos to post on their social media channels.

In the competition subsection, introduce your main competitors and explain what sets your video production company apart from them.

Finally, round off your market analysis by providing an overview of the main regulations that apply to your video production company.

5. The strategy section

When writing the strategy section of a business plan for your video production company, it is essential to include information about your competitive edge, pricing strategy, sales & marketing plan, milestones, and risks and mitigants.

The competitive edge subsection should explain what sets your company apart from its competitors. This part is especially key if you are writing the business plan of a startup, as you have to make a name for yourself in the marketplace against established players.

The pricing strategy subsection should demonstrate how you intend to remain profitable while still offering competitive prices to your customers.

The sales & marketing plan should outline how you intend to reach out and acquire new customers, as well as retain existing ones with loyalty programs or special offers. 

The milestones subsection should outline what your company has achieved to date, and its main objectives for the years to come - along with dates so that everyone involved has clear expectations of when progress can be expected.

The risks and mitigants subsection should list the main risks that jeopardize the execution of your plan and explain what measures you have taken to minimize these. This is essential in order for investors or lenders to feel secure in investing in your venture.

Your video production company could face a variety of risks. For example, there might be a risk of not meeting deadlines due to unanticipated events, such as equipment malfunction or illness. Additionally, there could be the risk of not obtaining the necessary permissions or rights to use copyrighted material. Taking the time to understand these risks and plan for them may help to mitigate potential losses.

6. The operations section

The operations of your video production company must be presented in detail in your business plan.

The first thing you should cover in this section is your staffing team, the main roles, and the overall recruitment plan to support the growth expected in your business plan. You should also outline the qualifications and experience necessary to fulfil each role, and how you intend to recruit (using job boards, referrals, or headhunters).

You should then state the operating hours of your video production company - so that the reader can check the adequacy of your staffing levels - and any plans for varying opening times during peak season. Additionally, the plan should include details on how you will handle customer queries outside of normal operating hours.

The next part of this section should focus on the key assets and IP required to operate your business. If you depend on any licenses or trademarks, physical structures (equipment or property) or lease agreements, these should all go in there.

You may have key assets such as expensive camera equipment and editing software that could be of great value to the company. Additionally, the company might have intellectual property such as scripts that could be used to produce original content or existing footage and audio that could be used to create compelling videos.

Finally, you should include a list of suppliers that you plan to work with and a breakdown of their services and main commercial terms (price, payment terms, contract duration, etc.). Investors are always keen to know if there is a particular reason why you have chosen to work with a specific supplier (higher-quality products or past relationships for example).

7. The presentation of the financial plan

The financial plan section is where we will include the financial forecast we discussed earlier in this guide.

Now that you have a clear idea of what goes into a video production company business plan, let's look at some of the tools you can use to create yours efficiently.

What tool should I use to write my video production company's business plan?

There are two main ways of creating your video production company business plan:

• Using specialized business planning software,
• Hiring a business plan writer.

Using an online business plan software for your video production company's business plan

Using online business planning software is the most efficient and modern way to write a video production company business plan.

There are several advantages to using specialized software:

• You can easily create your financial forecast by letting the software take care of the financial calculations for you without errors
• You are guided through the writing process by detailed instructions and examples for each part of the plan
• You can access a library of dozens of complete business plan samples and templates for inspiration
• You get a professional business plan, formatted and ready to be sent to your bank or investors
• You can easily track your actual financial performance against your financial forecast
• You can create scenarios to stress test your forecast's main assumptions
• You can easily update your forecast as time goes by to maintain visibility on future cash flows
• You have a friendly support team on standby to assist you when you are stuck

If you're interested in using this type of solution, you can try The Business Plan Shop for free by signing up here .

Hiring a business plan writer to write your video production company's business plan

Outsourcing your video production company business plan to a business plan writer can also be a viable option.

These writers possess valuable experience in crafting business plans and creating accurate financial forecasts. Additionally, enlisting their services can save you precious time, enabling you to concentrate on the day-to-day operations of your business.

It's important to be mindful, though, that hiring business plan writers comes with a cost. You'll be paying not just for their time but also for the software they use, and their profit margin.

Based on experience, a complete business plan usually requires a budget of at least £1.5k ($2.0k) excluding tax, and more if revisions are needed after initial meetings with lenders or investors - changes often arise following these discussions.

When seeking investment, be cautious about spending too much on consulting fees. Investors prefer their funds to contribute directly to business growth. Thus, the amount you spend on business plan writing services and other consulting services should be negligible compared to the amount you raise.

Another aspect to consider is that while you'll receive the output of the business plan, you usually won't own the actual document. It will be saved in the consultant's business plan software, which will make updating the plan challenging without retaining the consultant on a retainer.

Given these factors, it's essential to carefully weigh the pros and cons of outsourcing your video production company business plan to a business plan writer and decide what best suits your business's unique needs.

Why not create your video production company's business plan using Word or Excel?

I must advise against using Microsoft Excel and Word (or their Google, Apple, or open-source equivalents) to write your video production company business plan. Let me explain why.

Firstly, creating an accurate and error-free financial forecast on Excel (or any spreadsheet) is highly technical and requires a strong grasp of accounting principles and financial modelling skills. It is, therefore, unlikely that anyone will fully trust your numbers unless you have both a degree in finance and accounting and significant financial modelling experience, like us at The Business Plan Shop.

Secondly, relying on spreadsheets is inefficient. While it may have been the only option in the past, technology has advanced significantly, and software can now perform these tasks much faster and with greater accuracy. With the rise of AI, software can even help us detect mistakes in forecasts and analyze the numbers for better decision-making.

And with the rise of AI, software is also becoming smarter at helping us detect mistakes in our forecasts and helping us analyse the numbers to make better decisions.

Moreover, software makes it easier to compare actuals versus forecasts and maintain up-to-date forecasts to keep visibility on future cash flows, as we discussed earlier in this guide. This task is cumbersome when using spreadsheets.

Now, let's talk about the written part of your video production company business plan. While it may be less error-prone, using software can bring tremendous gains in productivity. Word processors, for example, lack instructions and examples for each part of your business plan. They also won't automatically update your numbers when changes occur in your forecast, and they don't handle formatting for you.

Overall, while Word or Excel may seem viable for some entrepreneurs to create a business plan, it's by far becoming an antiquated way of doing things.

• Using business plan software is a modern and cost-effective way of writing and maintaining business plans.
• A business plan is not a one-shot exercise as maintaining it current is the only way to keep visibility on your future cash flows.
• A business plan has 2 main parts: a financial forecast outlining the funding requirements of your video production company and the expected growth, profits and cash flows for the next 3 to 5 years; and a written part which gives the reader the information needed to decide if they believe the forecast is achievable.

We hope that this in-depth guide met your expectations and that you now have a clear understanding of how to write your video production company business plan. Do not hesitate to contact our friendly team if you have questions additional questions we haven't addressed here.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

• How to write a business plan to secure a bank loan?
• Key steps to write a business plan?
• Top mistakes to avoid in your business plan

Do you know entrepreneurs interested in starting or growing a video production company? Share this article with them!

Founder & CEO at The Business Plan Shop Ltd

Guillaume Le Brouster is a seasoned entrepreneur and financier.

Guillaume has been an entrepreneur for more than a decade and has first-hand experience of starting, running, and growing a successful business.

Prior to being a business owner, Guillaume worked in investment banking and private equity, where he spent most of his time creating complex financial forecasts, writing business plans, and analysing financial statements to make financing and investment decisions.

Guillaume holds a Master's Degree in Finance from ESCP Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management from Paris Dauphine University.

Published on 11 Sep 2023 , last update on 24 Nov 2023 , as per our editorial standards .

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Video Production Proposal Template

A video production proposal is a document that outlines the scope, timeline, budget, creative vision, and technical and administrative requirements of a video production project. Video production proposals are often sent by video production companies to clients or in-house video teams to other teams to pitch their video ideas.

Create a professional video production proposal for your production company or freelance videography business with Jotform Sign . Outline your project ideas, include video links, detail pricing packages, upload examples, and more. Once you’ve finished customizing the proposal, simply send it to your clients. When they sign, you’ll automatically receive a copy of the proposal.

Need to change up the look and feel of your Video Production Proposal Template to more accurately reflect your company branding? No sweat! Jotform has you covered with our easy-to-use online form builder. Drag and drop to upload videos, change fonts and colors, set an automated signing order, and more. Keep your video production business running smoothly with Jotform.

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Free Project Proposal Template

Don’t waste time creating multiple project proposals from scratch. With Jotform Sign’s ready-made Project Proposal template, you can generate and customize a professional-looking proposal that includes details such as an overview and description of the project, resources and budget, project goals, expected outcomes, and more. Update the wording however you see fit, then share it with clients via email to seamlessly gather e-signatures from any device.Want to personalize this Free Project Proposal to match your company’s branding with Jotform White Labeling? No problem! Using our powerful online builder, you can add or edit form fields, upload your logo and branding, include images, change fonts and colors, and make other design changes without any coding. Once both you and your client have signed this proposal, you’ll automatically receive a finalized document — ready to share, download, and print for your records.

Mobile App Development Proposal Template

Create a Mobile App Development Proposal Template that works for all occasions with Jotform Sign. With our entirely online signature and feedback collection process, you’ll be able to manage and reference signatures from your team members in one convenient place. Share via email or embed in your online team portal.Customizing this Mobile App Development Proposal Template is simple and efficient with Jotform Sign. Update the terms and conditions, add or remove form fields, change fonts and colors, and make other cosmetic changes with no coding required. Create your app proposal, send it straight to your team, and start collecting signatures and feedback instantly. Collaborate smarter with Jotform. To collect e-signatures on any device, create an e-sign document with Jotform Sign.

What is a video production proposal?

A video production proposal is a document that outlines a video team’s or freelance videographer’s project pitch to a potential client. This proposal is sent to a client by a freelance videographer or a video production company to outline the vision for the project.

Why is a video production proposal necessary?

Video production proposals are necessary to get clients to hire your video production team for their next project. Proposals in general let your clients know that your team is organized and capable enough to put together a cohesive vision for an upcoming project — be it a short film, marketing campaign, music video, wedding reel, or otherwise. Every company or freelancer will need a proposal to get their foot in the door.

What should be included in a video production proposal?

Most video production proposals include an introduction to your video production studio or freelance business, your video project idea, budget, timeline for delivering drafts and the final product, involved parties, resources you’ll need from the client, and more depending on your needs. Remember to include basic details like your studio’s name, mission, the reason why you want to work on this project, and your contact information.

How do I write a video production proposal?

To write your own video production proposal, start by coming up with a concept for your video project. Take notes and consult with your team about how you’d like to structure your video, what materials you’ll need, which locations you’d like to shoot at, and any other important highlights. Once you have a solid idea in mind, you can create your own video production proposal from scratch or use our ready-made video production proposal template.

What are the benefits of a well-written video production proposal?

There are many benefits to a well-written video production proposal. A professional video production proposal that clearly outlines your project vision and requirements can secure your video production company’s future clients and gigs. If your clients see that you can consistently produce well-written proposals, scripts, and agreements, they will be more likely to hire you for other projects or recommend you to colleagues and acquaintances.

What mistakes should I avoid when writing a video production proposal?

When writing your video production proposal, try to avoid mentioning small details that don’t really matter to your production’s bigger picture. Clients usually prefer digestible content that’s easy to read and follow — think of it as an overview of your vision for the project.

Try to avoid just throwing together a bunch of your ideas into a brief. Consider your audience and thoughtfully craft ideas to create a vision that’s easy to follow. Also, when putting together your proposal, don’t forget to include any specific requirements that were outlined by the client. Make sure to go over their requirements and specifications so you can submit something that’s polished and answers any questions your clients may have.

How much detail should I include in my video production proposal?

When creating your video production proposal, it’s important to include key information about your video proposal in the most concise manner possible. Add necessary details to the description of your proposal, including why you’re qualified to take on this project and why your ideas will get your clients what they’re looking for.

These templates are suggested forms only. If you're using a form as a contract, or to gather personal (or personal health) info, or for some other purpose with legal implications, we recommend that you do your homework to ensure you are complying with applicable laws and that you consult an attorney before relying on any particular form.

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Free Proposal Templates

Write a winning proposal in minutes with Jotform’s Proposal PDF Templates. Whether you need a business proposal , bid proposal , or project proposal, these free proposal templates will help guide you in creating an attention-grabbing proposal that contains key information regarding objectives, strategy, and budget. Proposal submissions will automatically be converted into PDFs that are easy to print, pitch, and present.

Personalize your proposal for your company or potential clients using Jotform’s PDF Editor . If you need to start from scratch, you can always get started generating a custom proposal for free! In any case, you’ll be able to modify your proposal template however you’d like, from writing additional form fields to changing fonts and colors. Jotform simplifies the proposal process so you can spend less time drawing up your proposals and more time closing deals.

Seeking new investors or clients? Use Jotform’s free business proposal template here to highlight the potential, ideas, and benefits of your business.

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What is a proposal?

A proposal is a formal offer written in response to a specific request or opportunity with a prospective client. As the name suggests, it proposes a unique idea or a solution to a client’s problem. Proposals are evaluated on whether they meet a client’s expectations regarding goals, timelines, deliverables, and budget.

What are the different types of proposals?

From sales proposals to construction proposals to book proposals, proposals are written for all purposes and industries. Some of the most common types of proposals are grant proposals, research proposals, and business proposals. Business proposals are either solicited or unsolicited. A solicited proposal is one that has been requested by a client or written in response to an RFP (request for proposal) . RFPs are sent out by companies and agencies and list specific requirements. Unsolicited proposals initiate the sales process without responding to a request and are generally considered to be more challenging to write.

What should I include in my proposal?

Our free proposal templates already include everything you'll need for your proposal. To learn more about proposals, read our article on items to include in a proposal!

How should I write an effective business proposal?

It takes a lot more than a good idea for a proposal to be successful. Check out our tips on how to write a winning proposal .

What makes a proposal different from an estimate, quote, bid, or business plan?

Unlike estimates, quotes, and bids, proposals include information beyond the specific cost of a project or service. Proposals provide an in-depth explanation of the work being done, with details about scope, deliverables, milestones, and qualifications as well as budget.

While a business plan and business proposal might sound like the same document, one focuses on a company’s internal operations while the other seeks to create a business relationship with another company. A business plan, usually written with the intent of securing funds from an investor, summarizes a company’s overall goals and objectives. On the other hand, a business proposal focuses on a specific project or service for a prospective client.

Can a proposal become a contract?

For a document to be considered a legally binding contract, it must consist of an offer, consideration, and acceptance. A proposal can serve as the foundation for a contract, but it will generally only require a client’s signature, whereas a contract needs signatures from all involved parties.

A signed proposal may become a contract only if it contains signatures from each party and contractual language such as terms and conditions. However, it’s best to keep your contract separate from your proposal in case your client disagrees with your offer and requires a new document outlining the negotiated terms. If you need inspiration for your contract, we recommend our free contract PDF templates.

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Video Production Proposal Template

Use Dock's video production proposal template to share your proposals and impress clients.

Video Production Proposal Template Walkthrough

Who this template is for.

This template is for project managers, producers, or sales and marketing teams that do video production for clients. It could also be used by any individual or team that specializes in video production services and wants to attract more clients. 

What this template is for

This template would be used to streamline the proposal process and present a professional, cohesive proposal to potential clients for a video production project. Customize it for small freelance projects or video production business proposals. 

How to use the template

Use Dock’s video production proposal template to provide an overview of the proposed project, including details like scope, timeline, and budget. Include information about the production team, highlighting the skills and experience of key members, as well as their roles and responsibilities on the project. You can also present examples of recent work, giving potential clients a clear understanding of your capabilities and style.

What’s in this template?

Introduction.

The introductory section of the video proposal template serves as the initial sales pitch to the client. Think of it like a cover letter containing general information about the proposal and the point-of-contact details, such as the name and contact information of your company and the person responsible for the proposal.

Recent Work

This section is for case studies that showcase previous work, highlighting your skills and experience. It includes detailed information about past projects, including their scope, the client, and the outcome.

Relevant Video Samples

This section provides examples of recent work in the form of short clips, highlight reels, or full-length projects. It would be designed to highlight the quality of deliverables and give clients an idea of their style and production abilities.

Proposal Overview

The proposal overview section typically provides a high-level view of the proposal and its various stages, including total costs. Including up-front pricing ensures that clients know early on whether the proposed project fits with their budget.

Our Process

This section outlines the production process in the form of an action plan laying out the specific steps involved in producing a video project. It details each stage of the video production process, from the first brief in pre-production, through production, to post-production and launch.

Meet Your Team

This section of the template introduces the video designers and other team members, highlighting their roles and responsibilities, and showcasing their skills and experience. This section helps clients understand who will be working on their project, what each team member brings to the table, and what they can expect from the team as a whole.

Why use this video production proposal template?

Dock’s video production proposal template is the perfect tool to help you share all the important details of your video production service with prospective clients. With its ability to showcase pre-production and post-production milestones, Figma files for storyboarding, case studies from previous projects, or project timelines, it makes it easy for clients to understand exactly what they can expect from your team.

Customize the template to create proposals that accurately reflect your brand and approach, and include high-quality videos as examples of your deliverables to give clients a clear understanding of your capabilities and style.

In addition to highlighting your team’s video production skills, Dock’s free proposal template also makes it simple to include different pricing options with a concise pricing table. By outlining payment terms you can ensure that everyone is on the same page from the outset.

Overall, this video production proposal template offers a repeatable and scalable sales process to impress potential clients and build a successful video production business.

Here’s what else the video production proposal template can do for you:

Streamline the process of project proposal creation

• Efficiently gather and organize all necessary information for proposal creation.
• Easily customize proposal templates to fit individual projects and clients.
• Automatically include pricing options with a pricing table.
• Quickly upload and showcase previous video work to support proposal claims.

Easily host production samples and case studies

• Showcase your unique style, approach, and working methods to differentiate your services from other video production companies.
• Build trust and credibility with potential clients by demonstrating your commitment to delivering high-quality results.
• Give clients a better understanding of the entire video production process, including pre-production, post-production, and key milestones.
• Ensure secure access to production materials and embed media in various formats.

Manage project details consistently and efficiently

• Keep all relevant project details in one place, accessible to all team members.
• Ensure that project information is accurate and consistent across all proposals.
• Use Dock's platform to track project details, including deadlines, budget, and milestones, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks.
• Easily monitor progress, make updates and changes, and track performance against established goals, all in one place, making project management more efficient and less time-consuming.

How Dock’s customers use this template

• Quickly create proposals suited to the client’s needs: Customizable sections and modular click-and-drag design makes it easier to create a proposal that truly stands out from the competition.
• Showcase your team’s video production skills: Highlight your team's qualifications and accomplishments, demonstrating why you are the best choice for the video production project.
• ‍ Communicate project details clearly: Present a clear and concise overview of the proposed project, including the timeline, budget, and key details about the production team, ensuring that both the client and production team are on the same page.

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Video Production Proposal Template

Free Video Production Proposal Template to Help You Win More Clients

• • Pre-written services section
• • Project timelines and milestones
• • Testimonials and case studies

Take advantage of the crazy demand for videos

• 85% of all internet users in the United States watched online video content on any of their devices ( Statista , 2018)
• 54% of consumers want to see more video content from a brand or business they support ( Hubspot , 2018)
• 87% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool ( Wyzowl , 2019)

Are you ready to take a piece of the pie? It starts an excellent video production proposal.

DISCLAIMER : We are not lawyers or a law firm and we do not provide legal, business or tax advice. We recommend you consult a lawyer or other appropriate professional before using any templates or agreements from this website.

Download our free Video Production Proposal Template

We’ve worked with professional proofreaders and legal experts to design a simple proposal template for you to download, edit, save, and send to prospects. Our template is 100% free for you to use.

Why you need a video production proposal template

The secret sauce to a winning video production proposal.

• 1. What kinds of online videos capture your attention the most? Why do you like them?
• 2. What makes your product, service, or cause unique from your competitors?
• 3. Have you worked with videographers in the past? If so, what did you like (or not like) about the experience?
• 4. Who is your target audience? Can you provide any data through surveys or analytics? Have you got a customer persona?
• 5. How involved would you like to be in the content creation process?
• 6. In your mind, what makes a video successful? What metrics will prove that success?

Video Production Proposal

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Proposal Templates > Video Production Proposal Template

Video Production Proposal Template

If you’re a video production company or filmmaker, you can kickstart your proposals with our polished video production proposal template with ready-made sections to showcase your past projects, project pricing, and details about your company. Customize, deliver, and track your proposals in minutes with our easy-to-use proposal platform, then get it signed by your client with built-in eSignatures to seal the deal.  

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Top 10 Video Production Proposal Templates with Samples and Examples

We can’t pause time, but we can certainly try to capture some of it in on video. In today’s digital age, videos give us the power to make moments timeless and create magic!

Whether for personal or professional purposes, making videos can be both fun and profitable. You create a story and then stitch frames together with pictures and sounds to give it meaning and flow. It is, however, not as jazzy as it sounds; in fact, it translates to a lot of work.

We are not just talking about the tasks involved in video production, but also about finding projects that allow you to showcase your proficiency and skill in using the medium to drive profitability or other business results. Landing such projects, at times, requires you to work your fingers to the bone. That being said, understanding when and where to put in the effort to gain maximum results is incredibly important.

To lay the groundwork for a successful video production business, invest your time in creating a comprehensive video production proposal and take our help.

What is a video production proposal?

A video production proposal is a document that outlines potential costs and a timeline for a video project. It is used to secure funding from clients or investors and can be a key part of ensuring that a project stays on track, and within budget.

A good proposal should outline all aspects of the video production process, from pre-production to post-production, and must also include a detailed breakdown of the budget. The video production proposal sample should explain the proposed distribution channels for the completed video, as well as any potential marketing and promotional activities.

Even though the elements of a video production proposal are simple and straightforward, putting these together to form an effective document is easier said than done. To facilitate this for you and make it easy, SlideTeam has taken care of all pain-points that mar the video proposal designing process. We have created predesigned, informative video production proposal PPT Templates. They are well-stocked with engaging graphics and images to give your video services a significant boost! Winning clients is, thus, just a presentation away, with the world-class PPT templates that we offer you.

Let’s check the best-in-class PPT Templates below!

Template 1: Video Production Proposal PPT Template

Impress your potential clients by showcasing your distinct skill-set on writing cover letters to proposal outline to project context and objectives, this customizable PPT Template contains all that you need. Just key in the details, and you are good to go. Download it now! And if you specialize in capturing the essence of the D-Day, these wedding photography proposal templates are just for you. Check them out!

Download this template

Template 2: Video Production Service Proposal PPT Template

Presenting your video production services proposal can be daunting. Handle this challenge like a pro with our content-ready PowerPoint Presentation Slideshow. You can use the given layout to discuss the video production process, timeframe, budget, and additional services that will help you outdo your competitors. Grab this template now!

Template 3: Corporate Video Production Proposal PPT Slideshow

With videos being a popular form of media nowadays, businesses are using the medium for marketing and promotional ventures. To cater to this growing market, use our PPT Video Production Proposal Templates. You can provide company overview, team composition, expertise, etc. Showcase compelling reasons on why should a potential client choose your video production services over others. Get it now!

Template 4: Video Production Proposal PPT Sample

In today’s competitive world, being the best in your field is not enough. You should be able to portray your skills too; and we are here to help. Use this video production Proposal Complete Deck PPT to elaborate on stages of the video production process. This production proposal sample is full of infographics, charts, and images that lets your presentation template amass huge recall value. Get it now!

Template 5: Video Production Project Proposal Sample PPT

This innovative design is loaded with engaging graphs, images, and high-quality content that will allow you to elucidate your video production approach to the client’s satisfaction. Our video production Proposal Sample PPT contains slides for cover letter, project context, objectives, as well as the fiscal breakdown. Download it now!

Template 6: Video Production Project Proposal Design PPT

Struggling to write a video production proposal? Our research-based handy video production project proposal PPT Design is all you need. Packed with every essential component of a video production proposal, such as client statement, project goals, video packages, terms and conditions, etc, it will help you close deals faster. Get it now!

Template 7: Corporate Video Production Proposal Template PPT

Save yourself the time and hassle of writing a video production proposal with a download of this predesigned, editable PPT Layout. The given video production proposal design is the perfect solution for video marketing agencies, videographers, corporate video production companies, etc, desirous of winning more clients. The slide’s usability is enhanced as it has the timeframe, key deliverables, budget, objectives, etc, elegantly presented in a single presentation. A presentation template cannot get better than this. Download now!

Template 8: Video Production Proposal Template PPT

Wondering how to go about writing a video production proposal? The given video production proposal sample is a great place to start. It contains qualities, from informative content to an invigorating color scheme, that are integral to drafting an impressive video production proposal. You can also put forward the company overview, activity schedule, pricing, etc. Download it and enlist your standouts in the best light!

Template 9: Timeline for Video Production Proposal Example PPT

Incorporate this video production proposal example to give an outline of the project. With this presentation, you can describe activities that will anchor the project and contribute to the desired outcome. It will facilitate better planning and structure to ensure that both parties are on the same page. Get this timeline for the corporate video production proposal template now!

Template 10: Gantt Chart for Corporate Video Production Proposal Layout PPT

The way you showcase key information can be a major factor in deciding the fate of your deal. Make sure you leave no stone unturned with this informative and engaging Gantt chart you’re your Corporate Video Production Proposal Slide. You can analyze all the important project schedule information, thereby managing activities in an efficient manner. Download now!

Be in the frame; get the video contract!

Now, no more sweats when writing a video production proposal because you’ve got SlideTeam’s best collection of video production proposal templates by your side. The designs give both high-quality and reliability. Whether you are a videographer or a video production company, these video production proposal PPT samples are sure to help you crack that deal. Download now!

FAQs on Video Production Proposal

How to write a video production proposal.

A video production proposal is a document used to sell your video production services to a potential client. Some tips on writing a winning video production proposal are shared below:

• Conduct client research. This will help you understand their needs and objectives for the project.
• Write a custom cover letter that outlines why you are the best choice for the project.
• Put together a detailed budget that includes all costs associated with the project.
• Create a timeline for the project that outlines each phase of production.
• Include links to samples of your previous work that are relevant to the project you are pitching.
• Make sure all material is proofread and free of errors before sending them off to the client.

To ensure you don't miss out any of these important components, video production proposal templates are a safe start.

What should be included in a video proposal?

While every video proposal will vary according to the project and client’s needs, some elements are a must-have in all video proposals. These form the basic structure of the document and are mentioned below:

• Project Objective: Your proposal must clearly state the objectives of the project.
• Project Outline: The proposal should contain a detailed plan for how the video will be produced. This includes a timeline, a budget, and a description of the cast and crew.
• Samples: Adding samples and examples of similar work that you have done in the past can be rewarding. It will give your potential clients an idea of your style and approach and help them decide whether you are the right fit for their project.

What is RFP in business?

Request For Proposal (RFP) is a document that businesses use to solicit proposals from potential vendors. The RFP process begins with a company defining its needs and objectives and issuing an RFP to many vendors. Each vendor then submits a proposal outlining how they would meet the company's needs. The company then reviews the submitted proposals and selects the vendor that they feel is best suited for the job. The RFP process is a great way for companies to ensure that they are getting the best possible value for money. It also allows businesses to compare offerings from vendors. In today’s business world, the RFP process is an essential tool.

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Corporate Video Production Proposal Template

Introduction

Thank you for contacting me. I put this proposal together based on our conversations. 

Here are a few quick observations:

• John Harbin wants to film their annual company conference, to be held in July at Hilton Head, SC. The aim is to produce a 3-5 minute highlight video, 2-4 minute interviews of the board of directors, and specific highlight videos of 20-40 seconds each for the main location booths.
• Mack Malek will review the event plans, produce a filming plan and schedule, provide the filming equipment, record the specified events, and produce fully edited files once the event has finished.

As you continue through this proposal, you will see how my Corporate Video Production services can help you meet your goals and your deadlines.

Why Mack Malek for Corporate Video Production services?

My work enables businesses and organizations to record their significant moments. I have filmed events for some of the largest corporations in America for the past twenty years. I create every video with an eye for the company’s image and exceptional quality.

I offer complete editing services, so there are no other professionals or contracts to hire or manage. When you choose me for your video services, you can relax knowing you will receive an excellent product at the end.

Here are some testimonials from previous clients:

• Mack Malek was great to work with. He made a comprehensive plan for our annual charity ball, captured all the right moments, and produced a variety of promotional materials we are still using today.
• Mack Malek is a brilliant professional. He understands how to use video to show off a company’s culture and best events.

My clients value my professionalism, commitment to deadlines, and the results I give them.

Project description

Based on your information, John Harbin wants to produce a number of videos based on your annual company conference. The event will be held in July at a hotel in Hilton Head, South Carolina. The expected attendance is between 300-400 guests. To get the best results, we’ll proceed in a few phases:

• Event Plan review: The first phase is critical for the final success of the project. We’ll go over your event plans together in detail to produce a plan for how to record the event efficiently.
• Event Planning: I will review the plans and suggest a complete filming plan for your event. The plan will include specific time for filming smaller sections of content, such as your store location booth highlights.
• Filming: Depending on the schedule and plan, I may hire several subcontractors as camera operators and filmographers. I work with several professionals regularly, so I can ensure brilliant results whoever holds the camera.
• Editing: After the event finishes, the footage will be edited to produce the videos you want to use in the future. Video files will be delivered in any of the common formats to suit your publishing needs.

All these phases tie together into a solid plan. The key to getting beautiful results on the day is to plan in advance.

Here is the plan for how my Corporate Video Production services will meet your goals. Let me break down the specific targets and how they will be met.

• We will review the current event plan in detail together. This review will require a joint meeting with the event planners at your company.
• Following our joint meeting, I will produce a full filming plan for the event. You will be able to review the plan and suggest changes.
• I will film the event according to the approved plan. Larger events or complicated schedules may require a team of videographers.
• After the event, I’ll edit all the footage into the specific videos you want to use for promotional material later. All the editing will be done within two weeks of finishing the event. The main highlights video will be finished within 48 hours of the end of the event.

Any adjustments to the plans can be made by sending me a message via the Slack channel or by email at [email protected].

Deadline and deliverables

I am committed to meeting your deadlines and delivering quality Corporate Video Production work on schedule. Here are the milestones for this project:

• The initial review and report should be completed within the first two weeks of launching the project. 
• We’ll schedule our review meeting together. The meeting itself shouldn’t take more than two hours. However, many clients have found it useful to receive some notes first, meet, think, and then meet again to talk some more.
• The next phase is simply to create the right plan prior to the event. I’ll put together a plan and send it to you for review not later than 4 weeks prior to the event.
• The video team will arrive at the venue the day before the event to ensure all locations have been checked and prepared. If the venue cannot be available the day before, then we require at least three hours prior to the beginning of the event to set up the equipment.
• After the event, many clients want a quick turnaround of their highlight videos. To facilitate this, I offer priority processing for one video. In this instance, the main highlight video will be produced within 48 hours of the end of the event.
• Following this, the remaining videos will be edited and delivered within 10 business days of the end of the event.

My services have a reputation for organization, follow through, and prompt delivery. I take pride in this reputation and look forward to delivering exceptional results for John Harbin.

Payment terms

Projects such as this one require payments at a few different stages. To facilitate these projects, I offer a schedule of payments. Here are the payment milestones:

• An initial payment of 25% will be due once the contract has been signed.
• A further payment of 25% will be due once the event plan has been approved by the client.
• Prior to the filming of the event, the next 25% payment will be due. An invoice will be sent to facilitate payment of this before the event begins.
• The final payment of 25% will be due two weeks after the event finishes. The final videos will be released once the payment has been made.

Electronic invoices will be sent once the contract has been signed and milestones passed. Each invoice is payable within 10 business days of receipt. Late payments may result in suspension of work and/or late fees as specified in the contract.

Once you agree to this proposal, I will prepare a simple contract for this Corporate Video Production project. The contract will reference the terms of this proposal, including any amendments you suggest. If you agree to these terms, please sign below, and return this proposal to me.

Thank you very much. I look forward to working with John Harbin.

John Harbin

How it works

• Seal the deal with legally vetted contracts that protect your work, time, and money.
• Manage your tasks and clients with simple yet powerful to-do lists and boards.
• Record your time automatically and track which hours have been paid or need to be billed.
• Get paid fast with invoices and accept multiple payment methods right through Indy.
• Get a bird’s-eye view of everything due with a personal command center that monitors the status of your proposals, contracts, tasks, and invoices.

Corporate Video Production Proposal Template FAQ

What is a corporate video production proposal template.

A proposal template can help you write your document in less time and with more ease. Simply fill the old one out by customizing it for each individual client to add relevant, useful information that will be of value to them.

By sending your client an attractive, professional proposal with clear language and easy to read formatting, you will be miles ahead of the competition when it comes time for them to choose a company.

When building a proposal, using the right template will help ensure it looks professional and contains all the necessary information. This includes topics such as previous clients' positive feedback or examples from other projects you've completed to give your client an idea about what they can expect when working with you.

Create a proposal template that can be used for every new project. By having the same level of design quality in each proposal, you establish yourself as an expert brand while making a great impression on clients you want to win.

How to write a Corporate Video Production proposal template?

In just a few easy steps, we will show you how to create your own Corporate Video Production proposal template.

First, you need a few things:

• You’ll be using a document editor. You could use a separate app such as Word, Google Docs, Adobe InDesign, or Pages.
• Even if you have one of those, we recommend Indy. Indy’s Proposals tool is a great way to create your proposal for clients because it integrates with the rest of your workflow and links up to client records while monitoring time spent on each assignment.
• You should also have access to any external files or media you want to include. For example, you will want your logo and pictures of landing pages you have already finished.

Now that you have those things, you can begin writing your Corporate Video Production proposal template.

One of the best ways to make a strong proposal template is by looking at an example that's already done well. If you have examples from previous proposals on hand, note what information can be reused and then use those as your guide for copying or rewriting it in the new document. For instance, if there are customer success stories included with first one: include them when making your new template. 

If you don’t have a completed template, then Indy's proposal can automatically create one for you so that all the content is ready to edit.

Here are the basic steps:

• In your new proposal template, add your company information and branding.
• Review the sections in the template and add or remove sections as you need them.
• Add information to each section. Focus on what you can reuse for every client.
• Once you have added all the reusable information, save your work.

That’s it! Your new proposal template is finished.

When you use your template to create a full proposal, make a note of anything that is missing. Once you’re finished, go back and add this to your template so it will be ready for the next time.

What should be in a Corporate Video Production proposal template?

Your proposal template shows potential clients your skills and attention to detail. Most proposal templates include a cover page, description of the work, timeline, portfolio, and a pricing page. You could add extra sections that suit your way of working.

Here are the elements we think you should include in every Corporate Video Production proposal:

• Beautiful Cover Page. Your work is all about images, so make your cover page stunning and attractive.
• Service Description. Describe your services and lay out the scope of work for this project. Be sure to include any specific requirements you have already discussed with the client. 
• Corporate Video Production Process and Milestones. Use this section to construct a timeline for the project so you client knows what to expect at each point along the way.
• Social Proof. Show off your previous work and clients to build trust in your abilities and talent.
• Costs and Pricing. By now, the client may be considering hiring you. This is the best time to introduce your prices.

From here, you can wrap up the proposal template with next steps the customer can take. These can include:

• A digital signing service for making the approval process happen much faster.
• A standard contract your client can review. Your contract can reference your proposal to make the client-specific sections relevant.
• You can also include a payment method here to help your client get started quickly.

Your proposal should make your client feel like you are the perfect person to hire. Once they reach this conclusion, do not waste any time. Contact them with a phone call or email to ask if there's anything else that needs clarification.

How can a free Corporate Video Production Proposal Template help you win more clients?

The secret to winning more clients as a freelancer is to build your client’s confidence in your abilities. Proposal templates helps you do this in a few ways:

• Show clients how efficient you are by preparing and sending proposals quickly. If you are on the ball, you can finish your first discovery call with a client, open your template, and have a finished proposal in 10-20 minutes.
• A template you have invested time in should look professional and appealing. When it’s time to finish a proposal and send it, your effort will be rewarded by a client who is impressed with the quality of your work.
• You can also make time for prospecting for new work. Using a proposal template could save you thirty minutes or more when it’s time to create a new proposal. Make the most of this time and go find some more leads.

Those are three ways your proposal template can help you land more jobs. Get started with one as soon as possible to begin reaping the benefits.

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Video productions usually require support, whether it is financial or resource-based. Like a business plan, a video production proposal is used to secure money and buy-in from managers or funding sources. An effective proposal will create interest in your project and demonstrate your professionalism and credibility.

If you are seeking funding and approval from a committee that reads a number of proposals, chances are that reviewers will not read the entire proposal on the first round of eliminations. To help get your proposal through, start with a brief overview of the project. In one page or less, the overview should explain what the video is about and why it is important. Briefly explain the story line and the scope, talk about the research that demonstrates market demand and give an idea of your budget. Include a list of key team members and a brief description of their experience. After reading the overview, reviewers should be curious about the story and convinced of the project's feasibility.

The first thing many readers will want to know about a potential video production is how much it will cost. With the time and equipment required to plan, shoot, edit and produce a video, the costs can get out of hand quickly. Head off any budgetary concerns by including a comprehensive, detailed budget as part of your proposal. Use a line item budget and include all of the costs that will be a part of the project, from the story boarding hours to actor salaries to editing software. Use bold fonts to highlight important figures and include a high and low estimate to account for unexpected changes during production. When your readers can see that you have put thought into the budget, it can help calm their fears about unplanned costs.

Added Value

An effective video proposal should convince readers that your project will have value. The specific value will depend on the type of project; business videos might aim to boost profits, while a documentary might be geared toward raising awareness about a specific issue. As you write your proposal, consider what is important to your reviewers and use language, rhetoric and research to convince them that your video production will support their interests. The more your proposal appeals to their emotional and practical concerns, the more effective it will be.

Video productions take time to complete; include a basic production schedule with the proposal to give reviewers a sense of the scope. Include major milestones: story boarding, hiring talent, completing shooting, editing, review and final production. A detailed schedule lets readers know that you have thought the project through and that you have a solid understanding of the technical aspects of video production. It is also an opportunity to build credibility by demonstrating your experience and understanding of the full process.

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Elizabeth Smith has been a scientific and engineering writer since 2004. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, newspapers and corporate publications. A frequent traveler, she also has penned articles as a travel writer. Smith has a Bachelor of Arts in communications and writing from Michigan State University.

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Whether you are starting your video business or are already established and looking for more funding, you may need to come up with a video production business plan, but how do you write a business plan? Necessary to create your video production business plan, and also give you some tips and guidance on dos and don'ts, as well as important things to keep in mind while writing.

Business plan for your video company - you're just getting started and want to create a business roadmap for what you're up to. You are at the beginning and turn to banks (or other investors) looking for money. Years in your video business but you need additional funding for one reason or another. You own an experienced video production company, but your core business is changing and you want a new written business plan that will help you find a way forward. situation m It can be any of the above or any combination of them. Whatever your reason for creating a video production business plan, this guide will help.

How to Create a Business Plan for Video Production

Just like working on a video project, creating a business plan is easier when you plan things and get the work done in advance. a lot of research, decision-making, and effort. I've written several business plans for various companies including my video production company. These are the most effective methods that have worked for me.

How to write a business plan?

• Start with the summary

So your first step is to sit down and think about your overall plan. I recommend working from the top down where you can get a general idea of ​​what you want, your priorities, and then work on discovering the details around the central idea. Essentially, this is your argument as to why you would want your video business in the first place. It helps make it memorable, but more importantly, it has to reflect what you want to implement in your business. It would be good to already identify what your niche market and the type of expected production would be and who essentially your target market would be: local businesses, network channels, online stores, bridal weddings, etc. Here you can drill down and analyze exactly who your market is.

It is particularly helpful to highlight what could set you apart from what your competitors are already offering. This is important here. So before I go much further, while researching this article, I came across an excellent video production business plan template, complete with sample written sections. Who else are the players in your market? Do you know who else offers a similar service? If they are in a decent local location or cover the same area as you, then you may consider them competitors if they offer at least one of the same services as you.

For example, let's say you run Bob's Awesome Video Production Company and have set up your local area for corporate videos for local businesses. It's a thriving market and makes a living doing promotional videos for locals. plus filming for events and conferences, etc. Everything is fine, but then a new video company opens (let's call it The Acme Video Company).

A competitor

So do this (especially if you're starting and growing your business): Come on your good friend, Mr. Google (aka Big G). near you and then a keyword that describes what you are doing. For example, “Video Production in Los Angeles” or “Corporate Video London”. Write down your competitors in a table. It is a good idea to create as much information about them as possible. Think of it as your “little black book” of all kinds. The smaller your town or area you want to work in, the fewer competitors you have. You don't have to list all of the competitors for your business plan. Just pick 5 of your biggest competitors. Your business plan, you want to dig deeper.

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Video Production Business Plan

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Michael's Video Service

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.

Michael’s Video Service uses the latest technology to provide video production services. This means that the services provided achieve a level of quality previously reserved for only the most expensive video production companies. 

Michael’s Video Service is a new company and as such, we will need to meet market acceptance. To that end, the company is working to determine trends in the industry, the needs of the customer, and how best to address the needs of the customer.   

Our services are geared for several markets, including television stations, companies, high schools, and families. We will initially target high schools with whom we can establish strategic alliances that will enable us to establish long term relationships with them. In our first year of operation, we believe we can capture 15 to 25% of the market, which translates into $100,000 – $130,000 in sales.

We believe that we can earn $149,000 in our first year, rising to $175,000 and $191,000 in our second and third years, respectively. Our market strategy will be to advertise and capitalize on the services that our competitors do not offer.

There are several companies with whom we will be competing. We have a competitive advantage, however, because our equipment is more aligned with the video production industry trends requiring digital technology, as opposed to analog devices.  

The company is seeking a loan in the amount of $300,000 which will be used to purchase the equipment and start-up expenses. The company’s revenue projections for the first three years are $149,000, $175,000, and $191,000, respectively. Michael’s Video Service expects to achieve profitability early on. 

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Powered by Microsoft Translator, the Book of News now has translations available to assist in reading content in languages other than English. Microsoft Translator relies on data and technology to provide its translation. Because translations are generated by Azure AI-powered machine translation they may not always be perfect or exact and should be used as an approximation of the original English language content.

BOOK OF NEWS

November 15 - 17, 2023, introduction.

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Foreword from Frank X. Shaw

Welcome once again to Microsoft Ignite and this year’s edition of the Book of News. It’s an action-packed version that features more than 100 announcements in a wide range of topics, including infrastructure, Microsoft Copilot, the relationship between data and AI, new tools for developers and security.

At this year’s Microsoft Ignite, our flagship event for IT developers and business decision makers, we are expecting 4,500 in-person attendees in Seattle and more than 175,000 registrants who are participating digitally. Everyone will learn about new products and updates launching today and hear from senior leaders and subject matter experts about what’s on the horizon.

The Book of News is designed to be your guide to all our announcements, making it easy for you to navigate the latest information and provide key details on the topics in which you are most interested. We are excited to share some groundbreaking new products and critical updates that help make work and life easier and more productive.

The overarching theme for this year’s Ignite is how we are working to empower our customers, partners and developers to thrive in the era of AI. In 2023, we witnessed entirely new ways of working via technological advances. Organizations count on their partners to provide innovative, efficient and safe solutions that lead to meaningful business outcomes, and we at Microsoft are proud to deliver those results.

We have a great lineup of news and exciting moments planned for this year’s Microsoft Ignite. I hope that you can join us.

As usual, we eagerly want your feedback. Please let us know how we can do better. We want to make sure you receive the information and context you need from this event. What can we do to make the experience even better next time?

What is the Book of News?

The Microsoft Ignite Book of News is your guide to key news items that we are announcing at Microsoft Ignite. The interactive Table of Contents gives you the option to select the items you are interested in, and the translation capabilities make the Book of News more accessible globally. (Just click the Translate button below the Table of Contents to enable translations.)

We pulled together a folder of imagery related to a few of the news items.  Please take a look at the imagery here . To watch keynotes and sessions related to news items, we have links below the news to get you quick access to upcoming sessions and on-demand videos.

We hope the Book of News provides all the information, executive insight and context you need. If you have any questions or feedback regarding content in the Book of News, please email  [email protected] .

If you are interested in speaking with an industry analyst about news announcements at Microsoft Ignite or Microsoft’s broader strategy and product offerings, please contact [email protected] .

1. Azure 1.1. Azure AI Services

1.1.1. azure machine learning updates streamline and operationalize ai.

Azure Machine Learning continues to improve user experiences with new enhancements, including the general availability of prompt flow and model catalog and the preview of an integration with OneLake in Microsoft Fabric, empowering developers and machine learning professionals to streamline the development of AI-powered applications and operationalize responsible generative AI solutions across all stages of the generative AI development lifecycle.

Updates to Azure Machine Learning include:

• Prompt flow streamlines the entire development lifecycle of applications powered by large language models (LLMs). It enables developers to design, construct, evaluate and deploy LLM workflows, connecting to a variety of foundation models, vector databases, prompts and Python tools through both visualized graphs and code-first experiences in CLI, SDK and Visual Studio Code extension. Prompt flow is now generally available in Azure Machine Learning and in preview in Azure AI Studio.
• Model catalog will empower users to discover, evaluate, fine-tune and deploy foundation models from renowned providers, such as Hugging Face, Meta and OpenAI, facilitating developers in selecting the optimal foundation models for their specific use cases. Within the model catalog, users can find a comprehensive comparison view for benchmarking metrics of multiple foundation models, allowing users to self-educate and make informed decisions about the suitability of models and datasets for their specific use cases. Model catalog has expanded to include new models like Code Llama, Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pretraining) models. Model catalog will be generally available soon and is available in preview in Azure AI Studio, broadening its availability and applicability.
• Model-as-a-Service through inference APIs and hosted-fine-tuning , coming soon in preview, will enable developers and machine learning professionals to easily integrate foundation models such as Llama 2 from Meta, upcoming premium models from Mistral, and Jais from G42 as an API endpoint to their applications and fine-tune models without having to manage the underlying GPU infrastructure.
• OneLake is now available in preview as a datastore in Azure Machine Learning, facilitating a seamless transition between Microsoft Fabric and Azure Machine Learning. This integration allows data engineers to share machine learning-ready data assets developed in Fabric, enabling machine learning professionals to directly utilize them for model training in Azure Machine Learning. Additionally, machine learning professionals can write model predictions back to OneLake for further processing in Fabric or to surface insights through Power BI.

Additional resources :

• Blog: Ignite 2023: What’s new in Azure AI Platforms – Charting the Future with Innovative AI and ML
• Keynote: Microsoft Cloud in the era of AI
• Breakout: End-to-End AI App Development: Prompt Engineering to LLMOps
• Breakout: Evaluating and Designing Responsible AI Systems for The Real World
• Demo: Llama 2 inference APIs & hosted fine-tuning in Azure AI model catalog 
• Demo: Monitor ML and GenAI apps for safety and quality in production
• Demo: Operationalize ML Lifecycle with managed feature store
• Demo: Transform your AI workflows with RAG in prompt flow

1.1.2. Microsoft launching AI platform Azure AI Studio

Microsoft is launching the preview of its unified AI platform, Azure AI Studio , which will empower all organizations and professional developers to innovate and shape the future with AI.

The platform, accessibly and responsibly designed, will equip organizations with a one-stop shop to seamlessly explore, build, test and deploy AI solutions using state-of-the-art AI tools and machine learning models, all grounded in responsible AI practices. Developers will be able to build generative AI applications, including copilot experiences, using out-of-the-box and customizable tooling and models.

Users can choose the data source, including Microsoft Fabric OneLake and Azure AI Search, for vector embeddings, select models from a comprehensive catalog of frontier and open-source models, orchestrate prompt flows, evaluate model responses, identify fine-tuning opportunities and scale proof of concepts into full production with continuous monitoring and refinement.

• Blog: Unleashing the Power of Generative AI: Azure AI Studio Leads the Way
• Blog: Driving inclusive AI innovation with Azure AI Studio .
• Blog: Driving AI Innovation Across Digital Landscapes – Azure AI and Microsoft Fabric Integration.
• Demo: AI-powered Search: From Prototypes to Production with Azure AI Studio
• Discussion: Building Copilots for Enterprise Experiences Q&A
• Discussion: Empowering Inclusive Innovation with Azure AI Studio Q&A
• Breakout: Build your own Copilot with Azure AI Studio
• Breakout: What’s New in Generative AI?

1.1.3. New capabilities for developers to build generative AI solutions safely, responsibly

Microsoft leads the industry in the safe and responsible use of AI. The company has set the standard with an industry-leading commitment to defend and indemnify commercial customers from lawsuits for copyright infringement with the Copilot Copyright Commitment (CCC). Today, Microsoft takes its commitment one step further by announcing the expansion of the CCC to customers using Azure OpenAI Service. The new benefit will be called the Customer Copyright Commitment. As part of this expansion, Microsoft has published new documentation to help Azure OpenAI Service customers implement technical measures to mitigate the risk of infringing content. Customers will need to comply with the documentation to take advantage of the benefit.

And Azure AI Content Safety, now generally available, helps organizations detect and mitigate harmful content and create better online experiences. Customers can use Azure AI Content Safety as a built-in-safety system within Azure OpenAI Service, for open-source models as part of their prompt engineering in Azure Machine Learning or as a standalone API service.

• Download: Visual assets
• Blog: Microsoft Azure AI, data, and application innovations help turn your AI ambitions into reality
• Learn: Customer Copyright Commitment Required Mitigations
• Keynote: Microsoft Ignite opening

1.1.4. New features for Azure AI Vision

Azure AI Vision offers innovative computer vision capabilities to empower developers to analyze images, read text and detect faces with pre-built image tagging, text extraction with optical character recognition (OCR) and responsible facial recognition.

Several new updates to the solution, including:

Liveness functionality and Vision SDK: Liveness functionality will help prevent face recognition spoofing attacks and conforms to ISO 30107-3 PAD Level 2. Vision SDK for Face will enable developers to easily add face recognition and liveness to mobile applications. Both features are in preview.

Image Analysis 4.0: This API introduces cutting-edge Image Analysis models, encompassing image captioning, OCR, object detection and more, all accessible through a single, synchronous API endpoint. Notably, the enhanced OCR model boasts improved accuracy for both typed and handwritten text in images. Image Analysis 4.0 is generally available.

Florence foundation model: Trained with billions of text-image pairs and integrated as cost-effective, production-ready computer vision services in Azure AI Vision, this improved feature enables developers to create cutting-edge, market-ready, responsible computer vision applications across various industries. Florence foundation model is generally available.

• Blog: Are You Alive: Enhancing Azure AI Vision Face API with Liveness Detection
• Blog: Announcing general availability of Azure AI Vision Image Analysis 4.0 API
• Lab: Implement a Computer Vision Solution with Azure AI Vision

1.1.5. New multimodal AI capabilities now available in Azure OpenAI Service

Azure OpenAI Service has unveiled several multimodal AI capabilities to empower businesses to build generative AI experiences with image, text and video. They include:

• DALL·E 3 : Imagine an AI model that can generate images from text descriptions. DALL·E 3 is a remarkable AI model that does just that. Users describe an image, and DALL·E 3 will be able to create it. DALL·E 3 is in preview.
• GPT-3.5 Turbo model with a 16k token prompt length and GPT-4 Turbo: The latest models in Azure OpenAI Service will enable customers to extend prompt length and bring even more control and efficiency to their generative AI applications. Both models will be available in preview at the end of November 2023.
• GPT-4 Turbo with Vision (GPT-4V): When integrated with Azure AI Vision, GPT-4V will enhance experiences by allowing the inclusion of images or videos along with text for generating text output, benefiting from Azure AI Vision enhancement like video analysis. GPT-4V will be in preview by the end of 2023.
• GPT-4 updates: Azure OpenAI Service has also rolled out updates to GPT-4, including the ability for fine-tuning. Fine-tuning will allow organizations to customize the AI model to better suit their specific needs. It’s akin to tailoring a suit to fit perfectly, but in the world of AI. Updates to GPT-4 are in preview.

These advancements in Azure OpenAI Service open new possibilities for businesses and users alike. With DALL·E 3  and GPT-4 Turbo for Vision, creativity knows no bounds, and communication with machines becomes more intuitive. The availability of GPT-3.5 Turbo with a 16K token prompt length, and GPT-4 Turbo, along with updates to GPT-4, will enable improved adaptability and efficiency, making it even more useful across various industries.

• Blog: GPT-4 Turbo with Vision on Azure OpenAI Service

1.1.6. New summarization and translation capabilities in Azure AI

Several new features in Azure AI will aid developers when summarizing and translating language for app usage. Updates, now in preview, include:

• A new task-optimization summarization capability in Azure AI Language, powered by large language models (GPT-3.5-Turbo, GPT-4, Z-Code++ and more).
• A new machine translation model capable of translating from one language to another without translating in English as an intermediary. In addition, it can be customized using customer data to better align translations to the industry’s context.
• Named entity recognition , document translation and summarization in containers will allow government agencies and industries, such as financial services and healthcare, with strict data residency requirements to run AI services on their own infrastructure.
• Personal voice , a new custom neural voice feature that will enable businesses to create custom neural voices with 60 seconds of audio samples for their users. Personal voice is a limited access feature .
• Text-to-speech avatar , a new text-to-speech capability that will generate a realistic facsimile of a person speaking based on input text and video data of a real person speaking. Both prebuilt and custom avatars are now in preview, however, custom avatar is a limited access feature.
• Blog: Empowering developers to use natural language capabilities using containers
• Blog: Azure AI Speech launches Personal Voice in preview
• Blog: Azure AI Speech announces public preview of text to speech avatar
• Demo: Next-gen summarization powered by generative AI
• Demo: Building brands with Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Speech

1.1.7. Unlock video insights with updates in Azure OpenAI

The powerful integration of Azure AI Video Indexer, Azure AI Search and Azure OpenAI Service offers users a comprehensive solution for capturing essential insights from video content and enables natural language question-answering, video summarization and efficient content search. These new features, now in preview, include:

• Video-to-text summary: Users will be able to extract the essence of video content and generate concise and informative text summaries. The advanced algorithm segments videos into coherent chapters, leveraging visual, audio and text cues to create sections that are easily accommodated in large language model (LLM) prompt windows. Each section contains essential content, including transcripts, audio events and visual elements. This is ideal for creating video recaps, training materials or knowledge-sharing.
• Efficient Video Content Search: Users will be able to transform video content into a searchable format using LLMs and Video Indexer’s insights. By converting video insights into LLM-friendly prompts, the main highlights are accessible for effective searching. Scene segmentation, audio events and visual details further enhance content division, allowing users to swiftly locate specific topics, moments or details within extensive video.

Additional resources:

• Email: Contact the Microsoft Media and Analyst Events Team for more information

1.1.8. Vector search and semantic ranker now generally available in Azure AI Search

Azure AI Search (formerly known as Azure Cognitive Search) is an information search and retrieval platform that enables organizations to deliver highly personalized experiences in their generative AI applications.

Updates to Azure AI Search include:

• Vector search : Large language models (LLMs) traverse large volumes of documents and information to generate responses to user queries. This is expensive and can result in slow response times. Given computers are faster and more efficient when working with numerical data compared to documents, techniques have been developed that turn documents and data into a numerical format, called a vector — a long floating point. Vector search indexes allow for faster, more efficient retrieval. Having great vector support is as important to getting a good answer out of an LLM as the LLM itself. Vector search is generally available.
• Semantic ranker (formally known as semantic search): With multilingual, deep learning models adapted from Microsoft Bing, semantic ranker prioritizes and ensures the most relevant search results are delivered first. Semantic ranker is generally available.
• Availability in Azure AI Studio: Azure AI Search is now available in Azure AI Studio, a new unified AI platform, currently in preview. A robust search and retrieval system is a critical component of the generative AI systems’ development lifecycle. Therefore, making Azure AI Search available in Azure AI Studio will enable support for the full value chain, streamlining workflow for the app developer by putting everything they need in one place.
• Blog: Announcing general availability of vector search and semantic ranker in Azure AI Search
• Discussion: Vector Search: Retrieval Augmented Generation and Generative AI Apps
• Demo: Revolutionizing Search Relevance with Semantic Ranking
• Breakout: Vector search and state of the art retrieval for Generative AI apps

1.2. Azure Compute

1.2.1. new amd-based azure virtual machines now in preview.

Azure is introducing the latest AMD-based virtual machines (VMs) built on the 4th Generation AMD EPYC™ Genoa processor. Now in preview for the D, E and F family VMs, these new VMs introduce even greater performance and reliability than the previous AMD v5 VMs based on the 3rd Generation AMD EPYC™ Milan processor. The new Genoa-based VMs will have different memory-to-core ratios spread across the three VM series – the general purpose Dav6 and Dalv6 series, the memory-optimized Eav6 series and the compute-optimized Fav6, Falv6 and Famv6 series.

The Dav6 VM series provides a good balance between memory-to-core ratio, while the Dalv6 series is meant to provide a more cost-effective option for applications that require less memory. The Eav6 VM series is built for applications demanding higher memory-to-core ratios. The Fav6, Falv6 and Famv6 series all have increased CPU performance in comparison to the D and E series AMD VMs and are different only in their memory-to-core ratio.

These new VMs will significantly expand the VM options available for AMD customers, spanning a multitude of popular VM series of varying memory sizes and budget.

• Blog: Public Preview: New AMD-based VMs with Increased Performance, Azure Boost, and NVMe Support
• Breakout: What’s new and what’s next with Azure IaaS

1.2.2. Running SAP HANA on Azure with new and powerful infrastructure options

The Azure M-series Mv3 family , the next generation of memory optimized virtual machines (VMs), gives customers faster insights, more uptime, lower total cost of ownership and improved price-performance for running SAP HANA workloads with direct Azure IaaS deployments and SAP RISE on Azure. The Mv3 VMs are powered by the 4th-generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors and Azure Boost, Microsoft’s system for offloading virtualization. The Mv3 family will scale for SAP workloads, ranging from less than 1 TB to 32 TB.

The Mv3 platform offers improved resilience against common failures in memory, storage and networking, resulting in minimal interruptions to mission-critical workloads. Mv3 delivers up to 30 percent faster SAP HANA ( Hi gh-performance  AN alytic  A ppliance) data load times for SAP OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) workloads compared to the previous generation Mv2, and up to 15 percent higher performance per core for SAP OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) workloads over Mv2.

Powered by Azure Boost, Mv3 delivers up to two times throughput to Azure premium solid-state drive (SSD) disk storage and up to 25 percent improvement in network throughput over Mv2. Azure Boost is a new system that offloads virtualization processes traditionally performed by the hypervisor and host OS, such as networking, storage and host management, onto purpose-built hardware and software. Azure Boost achieves several benefits for Mv3 VMs, including enhanced network and storage performance at scale, improved security through an additional layer of logical isolation and reduced maintenance impact during future Azure software and hardware upgrades.

Updates to the Mv3 family include:

• The Mv3 medium memory offering, with VM sizes up to 4 TB of memory, is now generally available.
• The Mv3 very high memory offering, with 32 TB of memory, is now in preview.
• See also: 1.5.1. AI infrastructure updates for more info on Azure Boost
• Blog: Announcing public preview of new Mv3 Medium Memory Virtual Machines
• Breakout: How Microsoft IT uses Azure to run a modern SAP environment

1.3. Azure Confidential Computing

1.3.1. confidential containers on azure kubernetes service in preview.

Confidential containers on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is the first cloud service offering pod-level isolation and memory encryption in a managed Kubernetes service based on the open-source Kata containers project and powered by AMD SEV-SNP. Organizations will be able to migrate their most sensitive container workloads to the cloud without any code changes, while protecting their data in memory from external and internal threats. Confidential containers on AKS is now in preview.

• Blog: Learn more about this update .
• Product Roundtable: Using confidential VMs and containers to enable new use cases

1.3.2. Microsoft Azure Managed Confidential Consortium Framework in preview

Microsoft Azure Managed Confidential Consortium Framework , now in preview, is a new Azure service that will offer execution of the Microsoft Confidential Consortium Framework (CCF) open-source SDKs as a managed service, eliminating the need for developers to stand up their own infrastructure to support a CCF API endpoint. Developers will be able to more easily build and manage confidential multi-party applications with decentralized trust on a secured and governed network of trusted execution environments.

• Keynote: Cloud Native Innovations with Mark Russinovich

1.3.3. New confidential virtual machine option for Azure Databricks

The confidential virtual machine (VM) option for Azure Databricks is now generally available.

Customers seeking to better ensure privacy of personally identifiable information (PII) or other sensitive data while analyzing that data in Azure Databricks can now do so by specifying AMD-based confidential VMs when creating an Azure Databricks cluster. Running a customer’s Azure Databricks cluster on Azure confidential VMs enables Azure Databricks customers to confidently analyze their sensitive data in Azure.

1.3.4. New confidential virtual machines with Intel processors in preview

The DCesv5-series and ECesv5-series confidential virtual machines (VMs) are now in preview. Featuring 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, these VMs are backed by an all-new hardware-based trusted execution environment called Intel® Trust Domain Extensions (TDX). Organizations will be able to use these VMs to seamlessly bring confidential workloads to the cloud without any code changes to their applications.

1.3.5. New features and services for Azure confidential virtual machines

New features and services for Azure confidential virtual machines (VMs) include Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.3 support, Disk Integrity Tool, temporary disk encryption, new region support and trusted launch as default in PowerShell for all Azure Gen 2 VMs.

RHEL 9.3 support for AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs will allow Azure customers to specify the RHEL 9.3 image as the guest operating system (OS) for AMD-based confidential VMs. This will ensure any sensitive data processed by their RHEL guest OS is protected in use, in memory. Azure AMD-based confidential VMs provide a strong, hardware-enforced boundary that hardens the protection of the guest OS against host operator access and other Azure tenants. These VMs are designed to help ensure that data in use, in memory, is protected from unauthorized users using encryption keys generated by the underlying chipset and inaccessible to Azure operators. RHEL 9.3 support for AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs is in preview.

Disk Integrity Tool for Intel TDX confidential VMs will allow customers to measure and attest to a disk in their confidential VM. The tooling comes as an Azure CLI extension that a user can install in their own trusted environment to run a few simple commands to protect the disk. When such integrity protected disks are used for confidential VM deployments, after the VM boots, users will be able to cryptographically attest that OS disk’s root/system partition contents are secure and as expected before processing any confidential workloads. Disk Integrity Tool for AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs is in preview.

Temporary disk encryption for AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs will allow Azure customers to encrypt the temporary disk attached to their AMD-based confidential VMs using customer-managed keys. This ensures any sensitive data on those disks is protected at rest. Temporary disk encryption for AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs is in preview.

New region support for AMD SEV-SNP confidential VMs is now generally available in the following new regions: Southeast Asia, Central India, East Asia, Italy North, Switzerland North, Japan East, Germany West Central and UAE North.

Trusted launch as default in PowerShell for all Azure Gen 2 VMs, now generally available, hardens Azure Virtual Machines with security features that allow administrators to deploy virtual machines with verified and signed bootloaders, OS kernels and a boot policy. This is accomplished via such trusted launch features as secure boot, vTPM and boot integrity monitoring that protect against boot kits, rootkits and kernel-level malware.

1.3.6. New NCCv5 series confidential virtual machines with NVIDIA H100 GPUs in preview

The NCCv5 series confidential virtual machines with NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs, in preview, will be the first and only cloud offering of its kind that will allow AI developers to deploy their GPU-powered applications confidentially. This will ensure data in both CPU and GPU memory is always encrypted by using keys generated by hardware and is protected from unauthorized alteration. Data scientists needing to train their models and gain insights from multiple third-party data sources will be able do so while ensuring personal data and AI models are kept private and provide evidence of their confidentiality through attestation reports.

• Keynote: Inside Microsoft AI innovations with Mark Russinovich
• Product Roundtable: Use cases for confidential ML including those using Azure Confidential VMs with NVIDIA H100 GPUs

1.4. Azure Data

1.4.1. amazon s3 shortcuts now generally available.

Amazon S3 shortcuts, now generally available, allow organizations to unify their data in Amazon S3 with their data in OneLake. With this update, data engineers can create a single virtualized data lake for their entire organization across Amazon S3 buckets and OneLake – without the latency of copying data from S3 and without changing overall data ownership.

Data lakes in S3 buckets can continue to exist and be managed externally to Microsoft Fabric. Data is mapped to the same unified namespace and can be accessed using the same Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 APIs even when the data is coming from S3. Fabric experiences and analytical engines can directly connect to virtualized S3 data in OneLake.

This enables organizations to accelerate the overall value of their data estate with Fabric across clouds, empowering them to leverage generative AI capabilities like Copilot in Microsoft Fabric or build tailor-made large language models grounded on their data with Azure AI Studio.

• Blog: Learn more about this update.
• Breakout: Unify your data across domains, clouds and engines in OneLake

1.4.2. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 shortcuts now available

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) shortcuts are now generally available, empowering data engineers to connect to data from external data lakes in ADLS Gen2 into OneLake through a live connection with target data.

With this update, data from ADLS Gen2 can be reused without copying it, eliminating data duplication and lowering integration cost across an enterprise. By creating an ADLS Gen2 shortcut, data is made ready for consumption through custom large language models (LLMs) or Power BI visuals. ADLS Gen2 shortcuts also accelerate the overall value of the data estate by enabling interoperability with Azure Databricks.

Through an ADLS Gen2 shortcut, customers can now receive fast performance through Power BI Direct Lake Mode with Azure Databricks. Since OneLake uses the same APIs as ADLS Gen2 and supports the same Delta Parquet format for data storage, Azure Databricks notebooks can be easily updated to use the OneLake endpoints for data stored in OneLake.

• Breakout: Make your data AI ready with Microsoft Fabric and Azure Databricks

1.4.3. Azure SQL updates offer better cost optimization, deeper integration

Several new features and updates for Azure SQL will make the offering more cost-efficient, reliable and secure. These updates include:

Lower pricing for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale compute

New pricing on Azure SQL Database Hyperscale offers cloud-native workloads the performance and security of Azure SQL at the price of commercial open-source databases. Hyperscale customers can save up to 35 percent on the compute resources they need to build scalable, AI-ready cloud applications of any size and I/O requirement. The new pricing will be generally available in mid-December 2023.

Azure SQL Managed Instance free trial offer , in preview soon, will allow customers to discover, use and explore Azure SQL Managed Instance free of charge for 12 months. Customers will be able to run proof of concepts, test applications or simply learn more about the operational benefits of a fully managed database-as-a-service.

The free trial offer will provide substantial compute and storage to test applications, including:

• 4 vCores or 8 vCores of compute, limited to 720 vCore hours per month.
• 64 GB of storage, plus 64 GB of backup storage.
• Start and stop instance compute resources on demand.

Azure SQL Managed Instance feature wave , now generally available, introduces a bundle of features that work together to make SQL Managed Instance even more performant, reliable and secure, while enabling even deeper integration with on-premises SQL Server and the broader Azure service platform. Features included in the bundle:

• Instance start/stop , which allows customers to start and stop their instance at their discretion to save on billing costs for vCores and SQL licensing.
• Zone redundancy , which lets customers deploy their managed instance across multiple availability zones and improve the availability of their service.
• Distributed Transaction Coordinator , which lets customers run transactions across multiple database types while keeping the databases in sync.

Additional resources: 

• Blog: Power what’s next with limitless relational databases from Azure
• Breakout: Get superior price and performance with Azure cloud-scale databases
• Demo: Migrate to innovate: Modernize your data on Azure SQL Managed Instance
• Demo: Scale up your SQL workloads with Azure SQL Database

1.4.4. Microsoft 365 data in Fabric with native OneLake integration

Microsoft 365 data is now able to natively integrate to OneLake in the Delta Parquet format, the optimal format for data analysis. Microsoft 365 data was previously offered only in JSON format. With this new integration, Microsoft 365 data will be seamlessly joined with other data sources in OneLake, enabling access to a suite of analytical experiences for organizations to transform and gain insight from their data. This also means that AI capabilities built using Microsoft Fabric notebooks will now directly access Microsoft 365 data within OneLake. This update is in preview.

1.4.5. Microsoft Fabric now generally available

Microsoft Fabric, an integrated and simplified experience for a data estate on an enterprise-grade data foundation, is now generally available. Fabric enables persistent data governance and a single capacity pricing model that scales with growth, and it’s open at every layer with no proprietary lock-ins. Fabric integrates Power BI, Data Factory and the next generation of Synapse to offer customers a price-effective and easy-to-manage modern analytics solution for the era of AI.

Fabric is for the entire enterprise, complete with role-tailored tools and deep integrations with Microsoft 365, Teams and AI copilots to accelerate analytics capabilities and help scale data value creation for everyone from data professionals to non-technical business users.

1.4.6. Microsoft Fabric, now part of Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, empowers ISVs

Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform (MIDP) is a set of tightly integrated data services that includes Microsoft Fabric, a unified analytics service that is now generally available. The intelligent data platform empowers organizations to invest more time creating value rather than integrating and managing their data estate.

Built as an easy-to-use software as a service (SaaS), Fabric is open and extensible, providing a rich set of capabilities for independent software vendors (ISVs) to further enrich the platform with industry leading applications. At Ignite, Microsoft will showcase how industry leading partners like London Stock Exchange, Esri, Informatica, Teradata and SAS are bringing their product experiences as workloads into Fabric. This will help partners widen their reach, and expand the breadth of capabilities that our mutual customers can access seamlessly with Microsoft Fabric.

• Breakout: Build ISV apps with Microsoft Fabric in the Intelligent Data Platform

1.4.7. New features in Azure Cosmos DB increase developer productivity, cost efficiency

Several new features in Azure Cosmos DB will help developers deliver apps in a more efficient manner while also reducing production cost. These updates include:

Dynamic scaling per partition/region, now in preview for new Azure Cosmos DB accounts, will allow customers to optimize for scale and cost in situations where partitioning is used to scale individual containers in a database to meet the performance needs of applications, or where multi-region configuration of Azure Cosmos DB is used for global distribution of data.

Dynamic scaling provides developers with added flexibility to save costs by scaling up and down their database needs on a more granular level, either by region or by partition of their data. This is cost-friendly for customers who run into hot partitions in their databases or have operations around the globe.

Microsoft Copilot for Azure integration in Azure Cosmos DB, now in preview, will bring AI into the Azure Cosmos DB developer experience. Specifically, this release enables developers to turn natural language questions into Azure Cosmos DB NoSQL queries in the query editor of Azure Cosmos DB Data Explorer. This new feature will increase developer productivity by generating queries and written explanations of the query operations as they ask questions about their data.

Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore , now generally available, allows developers to build intelligent applications in Azure with MongoDB compatibility. With Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore, developers can enjoy the benefits of native Azure integrations, low total cost of ownership and the familiar vCore architecture when migrating existing applications or building new ones. Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore is also introducing a free tier, which is a developer-friendly way to explore the platform’s capabilities without any cost. Learn more about the free tier .

In addition, a new Azure AI Advantage offer will help customers realize the value of Azure Cosmos DB and Azure AI together. Benefits include:

• Savings up to 40,000 RU/s for three months on Azure Cosmos DB when using GitHub Copilot or Azure AI, including Azure OpenAI Service.
• World-class infrastructure and security to grow business and safeguard data.
• Enhanced reliability of generative AI applications by leveraging the speed of Azure Cosmos DB to retrieve and process data.

Vector search in Azure Cosmos DB MongoDB vCore , now generally available, allows developers to seamlessly integrate their AI-based applications with the data stored in Azure Cosmos DB. Vector search enables users to efficiently store, index and query high-dimensional vector data, eliminating the need to transfer the data to more-expensive alternatives for vector search capabilities, such as vector databases.

• Blog: Learn more about dynamic scaling.
• Blog: Learn more about Microsoft Copilot for Azure integration in Azure Cosmos DB..
• Breakout: Data for the era of AI: build intelligent apps with Azure Cosmos DB
• Demo: Optimizing workloads with Azure Cosmos DB’s newest Autoscale features
• Demo: Build AI-powered apps with Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vector search
• Discussion: Creating your own ChatGPT experience with enterprise data: Q&A

1.4.8. New manageability and security features for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc

Enhancements to SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc offer additional management capabilities to SQL Server running outside Azure, including monitoring, high availability/disaster recovery (HA/DR) management and Extended Security Updates.

Monitoring for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc , now in preview, will allow customers to gain critical insights into their entire SQL Server estate across on-premises datacenter and cloud, optimize for database performance and diagnose problems faster. With this monitoring tool, customers will be empowered to switch from a reactive operation mode to a proactive one, further improving database uptime while reducing routine workloads.

Enhanced high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) management for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc is now in preview. With Azure Arc, customers can now improve SQL Server business continuity and consistency by viewing and managing Always On availability groups, failover cluster instances and backups directly from the Azure portal. This new capability will provide customers with better visibility and a much easier and more flexible way to configure critical database operations.

Extended Security Updates for SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc is now generally available. Extended Security Updates for SQL Server, which provide critical security updates for up to three years after the end of extended support, are now available as a service through Azure Arc. With the Extended Security Update service, customers running older SQL Server versions on-premises or in multicloud environments can manage security patches from the Azure portal. Extended Security Updates enabled by Azure Arc give financial flexibility with a pay-as-you-go subscription model.

• Breakout: Do More with Windows Server and SQL Server on Azure
• Breakout: Design cloud to edge architecture patterns with Azure Arc
• Demo: Bring automated data manageability to SQL Server anywhere
• Discussion: Bring cloud-native automated data manageability to SQL Server: Q&A

1.4.9. New performance enhancements in Azure Database for MySQL Business Critical

New performance enhancements in Azure Database for MySQL Business Critical service tier make it ideal for high-performance transactional or analytical applications. With the preview of Accelerated Logs, organizations may see an out-of-the-box improvement in performance of up to two times or more at no additional cost, based on internal testing by Microsoft.

A recent performance benchmark study by Principled Technologies shows that Azure Database for MySQL Business Critical service tier is up to 50 percent faster than MySQL on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Relational Data Service and up to 2.6 times faster than Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Cloud SQL for MySQL. These enhancements help make Azure Database for MySQL Business Critical ideal for mission-critical, Tier 1 MySQL workloads.

• Demo: Explore new business-critical features of Azure Database for MySQL

1.4.10. Performance enhancements and new AI capabilities for Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a database service built on Microsoft’s scalable cloud infrastructure for application developers. Updates to the service include:

Enhanced performance and scalability for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. This update provides advanced storage and compute capabilities that enable optimal price-performance for enterprise production workloads. Features include:

• Premium SSD v2 , in preview, will offer sub-millisecond disk latencies plus up to 64 TB storage and 80K input/output operations (IOPS) for demanding IO-intensive workloads at a low cost, providing great flexibility for managing performance and cost for Tier-1 production environments.
• IOPS scaling , in preview, will enable customers to scale up IOPS up to 20K to perform transient operations such as migrations or data loads more quickly, and then scale it back down when not required, to save cost.
• Online, dynamic compute and storage scaling , now generally available, adjusts the amount of compute and storage resources based on current demand via a seamless experience with near-zero downtime.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL extension for Azure AI will allow developers to leverage large language models (LLMs) and build rich PostgreSQL generative AI applications, meaning PostgreSQL queries on Azure can now power Azure AI applications. Now in preview, the extension will enable:

• Calling into Azure OpenAI Service to generate LLM-based vector embeddings that allow efficient similarity searches, which is particularly powerful for recommendation systems.
• Calling into Azure AI Language for a wide range of scenarios such as sentiment analysis, language detection, entity recognition and more.
• Demo: Best performance and scalability with PostgreSQL in Azure
• Demo: Build AI solutions with Azure Database for PostgreSQL

1.5. Azure Infrastructure

1.5.1. ai infrastructure updates.

Azure is the world’s computer, powering a range of solutions from cloud services to running the most sophisticated AI models. With insights from workloads and customer requirements, Microsoft is optimizing and innovating across every layer of the hardware and software stack.

Microsoft’s ecosystem approach includes longstanding partnerships with industry leaders to provide customers with choice in performance, efficiency and cost for AI inferencing, training and general compute.

Azure infrastructure is adding choice in price and performance across the Azure infrastructure technology stack, from the datacenter and its racks to servers and the silicon that powers them, including:

Custom-built silicon for AI and enterprise workloads in the Microsoft Cloud Today, Microsoft is announcing new custom silicon that complements Microsoft’s offerings with industry partners. The two new chips, Microsoft Azure Maia and Microsoft Azure Cobalt, were built with a holistic view of hardware and software systems to optimize performance and price.

Microsoft Azure Maia is an AI Accelerator chip designed to run cloud-based training and inferencing for AI workloads, such as OpenAI models, Bing, GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT.

Microsoft Azure Cobalt is a cloud-native chip based on Arm architecture optimized for performance, power efficiency and cost-effectiveness for general purpose workloads.

Azure Boost is now generally available One of Microsoft Azure’s latest and most significant infrastructure improvements, Azure Boost, is now generally available. Azure Boost enables greater network and storage performance at scale, improves security, and reduces servicing impact by moving virtualization processes traditionally performed by the host servers, such as networking, storage and host management, onto purpose-built hardware and software optimized for these processes. This innovation allows Microsoft to achieve the fastest remote and local storage performances in the market today, with a remote storage performance of 12.5 Gbps (gigabits per second) throughput and 650K IOPS (input/output operations per second) and a local storage performance of 17.3 Gbps throughput and 3.8M IOPS.

N D MI300 v5 virtual machines with AMD chips optimized for generative AI workloads The ND MI300 v5 virtual machines are designed to accelerate the processing of AI workloads for high range AI model training and generative inferencing, and will feature AMD’s latest GPU, the AMD Instinct MI300X.

NC H100 v5 virtual machines with latest NVIDIA GPUs The new NC H100 v5 Virtual Machine (VM) Series, in preview, is built on the latest NVL variant of the NVIDIA Hopper 100 (H100), which will offer greater memory per GPU. The new VM series will provide customers with greater performance, reliability and efficiency for mid-range AI training and generative AI inferencing. By maintaining more memory per GPU in the VM, customers increase data processing efficiency and enhance overall workload performance.

• Blog: Learn more on Microsoft Source.
• Blog: Learn more about Azure Boost.
• Breakout: Unlock AI innovation with Azure AI Infrastructure

1.5.2. Azure Monitor and Azure Migrate updates

Azure Monitor System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Managed Instance brings SCOM monitoring capabilities and configurable health models to Azure Monitor. A capability within Azure Monitor, SCOM Managed Instance provides a cloud-based alternative for SCOM customers, providing monitoring continuity for cloud and on-premises environments across the cloud adoption journey.

SCOM Managed Instance is now generally available. Since preview, SCOM Managed Instance has added multiple capabilities such as the integration of SCOM alerts with that of Azure Monitor, the ability to send integrated alerts to IT service management tools, the ability to view service health from the Azure portal and an enhanced onboarding experience.

Azure Migrate , the service used to migrate to and modernize in Azure, is introducing discovery, business case analysis and assessment support for new workloads. This allows customers to analyze their configuration and compatibility for new use cases so they can determine appropriately sized Azure instances at optimal cost and without blockers.

Specific features, in preview, include Spring apps assessment, business case with management costs, business case and assessment with security and Windows and SQL ESU in business case and Web apps assessment, which is generally available.

• Blog: Learn more about updates to Azure Monitor System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Managed Instance .
• Blog: Learn more about new Azure Migrate updates .
• Breakout: Migrate to Innovate: Be AI-ready, secure and optimize operations
• Demo: Next-gen monitoring with Azure Monitor

1.5.3. Introducing Azure IoT Operations

Azure IoT Operations is a new addition to the Azure IoT portfolio that will offer a unified, end-to-end Microsoft solution that digitally transforms physical operations seamlessly from the cloud to the edge.

This offering, now in preview, will feature a “One Microsoft” approach from cloud to edge to digitally transform physical operations. Microsoft is standardizing cloud-to-edge architecture for digital solutions in physical operations with industry standards and open-source approaches.

This unifying approach for customers’ digital ecosystems will remove technical hurdles for the next level of digital transformation, enable technical collaboration across IT and operational technology and bring interoperability and scalability to digital solutions.

That unified approach consists of the following:

• Management plane: One control plane to secure and govern assets and workloads across cloud to edge with Azure Arc.
• Application development: Consistently build and deploy apps anywhere, in the cloud or at the edge.
• Cloud-to-edge data plane: Seamless integration at the data level from asset to cloud and back again.
• Common infrastructure: Customers can connect investments in the cloud with their on-premises resources.
• Breakout: The AI-era of Industrial Transformation
• Discussion: Evolving IoT for physical operations

1.5.4. Microsoft and Oracle announce general availability of Oracle Database@Azure

Microsoft and Oracle announce the general availability of Oracle Database@Azure , which will become available in the US East Azure region starting in December 2023, with expansions planned in the additional regions in the first quarter of 2024 and beyond. Customers will have direct access to Oracle database services running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) deployed in Microsoft Azure datacenters, starting with the Oracle Exadata Database Service, combined with the security, flexibility and best-in-class services of Microsoft Azure. Microsoft is the only other hyperscaler to offer OCI Database Services to simplify cloud migration, multicloud deployment and management.

• Microsite: Learn more about this update .
• Demo: OracleDatabase@Azure Demo
• Discussion: Multicloud with OCI and Azure – Oracle Database@Azure
• Breakout: Migrate Oracle workloads to Azure

1.5.5. Updates across Azure Arc

Azure Arc simplifies governance and management by delivering a consistent multicloud and on-premises management platform to help organizations control and govern their environments. Updates to Azure Arc features and infrastructure capabilities include:

VMware vSphere enabled by Azure Arc , now generally available, will help users simplify management of hybrid IT estate distributed across VMware vSphere and Azure. It does so with the enablement of Azure Arc, which extends the Azure control plane to VMware vSphere infrastructure and enables the use of Azure security, governance and management capabilities consistently across VMware vSphere and Azure.

Customers can start with connecting Azure Arc to the resources in the VMware vSphere deployments, install agents at scale and enable Azure management, observability and security solutions, while benefitting from the existing lifecycle management capabilities. This feature is now generally available.

The latest Azure Stack HCI feature update , in preview, will bring innovative capabilities that continue to simplify the day-to-day life of IT pros by making the deployment and management of Azure Stack HCI simpler and more automated when coupled with the newly released turnkey solutions. For example, a new cluster deployment capability will automatically provision virtual machines (VMs) and the ability to manage Azure Stack HCI updates from the Azure portal at scale. Additionally, this feature update also expands VM extensions support that include Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Monitor and Azure Update Manager.

Other updates, in preview, include:

• Site manager , a new feature as part of the Azure Stack HCI update that will help customers organize all Arc resources per location, which saves time.
• A new tool that will leverage Azure Migrate to enable customers to migrate their Hyper-V virtual machines directly to Azure Stack HCI nodes . This simplifies customer migration to a new infrastructure, which is especially useful during their hardware refresh cycle.

In addition to Azure Stack HCI news, AKS on VMware , in preview, will give customers who have used Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in the cloud or AKS on-premises on Windows Server or Azure Stack HCI the same experience for their VMware environment. With this new member of the AKS family, Microsoft will have a holistic suite of Kubernetes offerings for customers in the cloud and on-premises.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) self-service capabilities are now generally available in Azure with Azure Arc. Once connected with Azure Arc, customers can manage and control their System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) environments on Azure and perform VM self-service operations from the Azure portal. Customers get a consistent management experience across Azure for the cloud and hybrid environments. For Azure Pack customers, this solution is intended as an alternative to performing VM self-service operations.

• Blog: Bring Azure to your VMware environment: Announcing GA of VMware vSphere enabled by Azure Arc
• Blog: Accelerate edge deployments with cloud-managed infrastructure and Azure Stack HCI version 23H2
• Learn: What’s new in System Center Virtual Machine Manager

1.5.6. Updates to Azure Storage services

Several new features and performance enhancements for storage on Microsoft Azure are designed to simplify data management, enhance performance and facilitate a smoother migration to the cloud. These updates include:

Azure Ultra Disk Storage: The maximum provisioned input/output operations (IOPS) per second and provisioned throughput on Azure Ultra Disk Storage is increased to 400,000 IOPS and 10,000 MB/s per disk. A single Ultra Disk can achieve the maximum IOPS and throughput of the largest Azure virtual machines, reducing the complexity of managing multiple disks striped together. The increased performance can also be leveraged by multiple Azure Virtual Machines when the Ultra Disk is configured as a shared disk. This update is generally available.

Azure Storage Mover: Azure Storage Mover is a Microsoft service that enables Azure storage customers to migrate their on-premises file shares to Azure file shares and Azure Blob Storage. Updates include:

• The Server Message Block (SMB) share to Azure file share migration path is now generally available.
• A Storage Mover agent image for VMware is now generally available.
• Storage accounts with the blob storage Hierarchical Namespace Service feature are now supported in preview.

New file system performance and economics with Azure Native Qumulo Scalable File Service: Azure Native Qumulo (ANQ) V2 Scalable File Service transforms the cloud file service by combining the performance and elasticity of the cloud with enterprise features and universal compatibility of on-premises file systems.

New and enhanced capabilities, generally available, include:

• Unbeatable economics: ANQ offers pay-as-you-go pricing, enabling reductions in cost as data volume grows.
• Cloud scale: ANQ separates performance from capacity, allowing throughput and capacity to scale independently, elastically and seamlessly.
• Cloud simplicity: ANQ’s rapid deployment gets customers running in just 12 minutes directly in the Azure portal. With ANQ V2’s global namespaces, all workloads can be pointed to a single namespace regardless of the data residing on ANQ or in on-premises Qumulo environments.
• Blog: Learn more about Azure Native Qumulo Scalable File Service.
• Blog: Learn more about Azure Storage updates .
• Product roundtable: Streamline storage data management with Azure Storage Actions
• Discussion: Ask our migration experts about migrating data to Azure Storage

1.6. Azure Management & Operations

1.6.1. azure business continuity center helps manage, protect and govern resources at scale, now in preview.

Azure Business Continuity Center is a tool that will give IT admins comprehensive, resilient protection capabilities to address complex security requirements and rapidly evolving threats. The new Azure Business Continuity Center, now in preview, will provide IT admins with these benefits:

• Simplified management: A one-stop solution for ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) by providing customers with the ability to manage solutions across first-party Azure services, such as Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery, and eventually third-party solutions.
• Rich insights : Users can view a security summary of the entire BCDR estate and receive guidance on individual security properties with actionable insights to improve security posture.
• Protection across the continuum: Helps ensure efficient ransomware protection and mitigation for the infrastructure, data and application layers with simplified monitoring to validate current protection state and configuration drift.

1.6.2. Azure Chaos Studio now generally available

Azure Chaos Studio , now generally available, provides a fully managed experimentation platform for discovering challenging issues through experiment templates, dynamic targets and a more guided user interface.

Chaos Studio offers customers the opportunity to intentionally disrupt their applications to uncover reliability issues and strategize for issue prevention before they impact users. For example, Chaos Studio enables users to assess how applications respond to real-world disruptions like network delays, unexpected storage failures, expired secrets or even complete datacenter outages. Templates in Chaos Studio allow customers, in a matter of minutes, to test the resilience of their Azure resources by providing a set of pre-filled experiments based on common outage scenarios. Dynamic targets functionality allows users to select experiment targets by using Keyword Query Language (KQL) queries, rather than static list selection, allowing more sophisticated fault injection scenarios to be created.

Customers acquire the ability to boost their resilience against faults and failures by gaining a better understanding of application resiliency, conducting experiments with a wide variety of agent- and service-based faults and maintaining production quality through continuous validation.

• Blog: Announcing General Availability: Microsoft Azure Chaos Studio
• Discussion: Optimize app reliability with automated Load and Chaos testing, Q&A

2. Developer 2.1. Developer Community

2.1.1. new ai microsoft applied skills credentials now available.

Microsoft is releasing new Microsoft Applied Skills credentials critical to AI transformation to help users:

• Develop generative AI with Azure OpenAI Service.
• Create an intelligent document processing solution with Azure AI Document Intelligence.
• Build a natural language processing solution with Azure AI Language.
• Build an Azure AI Vision solution.

Microsoft previously announced Microsoft Applied Skills, a new credential that allows individuals to prove they have specific skills needed to implement projects aligned to business scenarios.

Including the new set available at Microsoft Ignite, 15 Microsoft Applied Skills credentials have been released and with at least five more coming by the end of December 2023. The new credentials align to projects, like developing generative AI solutions or configuring secure access using Azure networking, which are key as organizations adopt cloud and AI technologies.

Microsoft Certifications and Microsoft Applied Skills are complementary and verified by Microsoft, offering a signal of trust to organizations and helping them efficiently pinpoint talent with the technical skills they need to implement highly technical solutions and take on projects critical to organizational success.

The process to earn a Microsoft Applied Skills credential is designed to be straightforward and flexible and includes:

• Optional training, including free self-paced learning paths available on Microsoft Learn, with instructor-led training coming soon.
• Passing an interactive, lab-based assessment that takes candidates through a series of scenario-based tasks in products like Microsoft Azure or Power Platform. The lab assessment is accessible on-demand directly from Microsoft Learn.
• Receiving a credential, verified by Microsoft, which can be easily shared to LinkedIn profiles, providing the opportunity to showcase new skills on a professional network.
• Discussion: Boost your profile with the new Microsoft Applied Skills credential
• Demo:  Navigating Microsoft Credentials

2.2. Developer Tools & DevOps

2.2.1. azure migrate application and code assessment now generally available.

The Azure Migrate application and code assessment , now generally available, complements the Azure Migrate assessment and migration tool to help modernize and re-platform large-scale .NET and Java applications through detailed code and application scanning and dependencies detections. The tool offers a comprehensive report with recommended code changes for customers to apply a broad range of code transformations with different use cases and code patterns.

• Breakout: Unlock innovation with AI by migrating enterprise apps to App Service
• Discussion: Easy app migration with production grade landing zones & app patterns
• Demo: Move to the cloud faster with Azure Migrate app and code assessmen

2.2.2. Azure Container Apps makes it easier to deploy apps, run AI workloads

Azure Container Apps is adding new features to make it easier to deploy code to the cloud and run AI workloads.

• Dedicated GPU workload profiles: Users will be able to run machine learning models with Azure Container Apps as a target compute platform to build event driven intelligent applications to train models or derive data-driven insights. This feature is in preview.
• Azure Container Apps landing zone accelerator: Simplifies building of a production-grade secured infrastructure at an enterprise scale to deploy fully managed, cloud-native apps and microservices. This feature is generally available.
• Azure Container Apps code to cloud: Users will be able to focus on code and quickly take an application from source to cloud without the need to understand containers or how to package application code for deployment. This feature is in preview.
• Vector database add-ins: Three of the most popular open-source vector database variants, Qdrant, Milvus and Weaviate, are now available in preview as add-ins for developers to get started in a fast and affordable way.
• Blog: Build Intelligent Apps and Microservices with Azure Container Apps
• Breakout: AI and Kubernetes: A winning combination for Modern App Development
• Discussion: All about Intelligent apps: What are they and how to build them Q&A
• Demo: Move to the cloud faster with Azure Migrate app and code assessment

2.2.3. Azure Deployment Environments adds new capabilities

Azure Deployment Environments is adding new capabilities to increase Azure service integration and expand configuration options. These features, now in preview, will make it easier to set up and delete application infrastructure with the Azure Developer CLI tool and the schedule auto-expiry feature and include:

• Azure Developer CLI (azd) integration: Enterprise developers will be able to leverage azd to provision application infrastructure using Azure Deployment Environments and more easily deploy code onto their provisioned infrastructure.
• Schedule auto-expiry: Development teams will be able to configure environments to auto-expire so that the resources are deleted once an environment is no longer needed.
• Breakout: Develop in the cloud with Dev Box and Azure Deployment Environments

2.2.4. Azure Functions announces support for .NET 8, new hosting plan

Azure Functions now supports .NET 8 for applications using the isolated worker model. Support is now available for Windows and Linux on the consumption, elastic premium and application service plan hosting options. This update is generally available.

Flex Consumption Plan is a new Azure Functions hosting plan that will build on the consumption, pay-for-what’s-used, serverless billing model. It will provide more flexibility and customizability without compromising on available features. New capabilities will include fast and large elastic scale, instance size selection, private networking, availability zones and high concurrency control. Users can request access to the private preview .

2.2.5. Azure Kubernetes Service offers new capabilities for AI and machine learning workloads

Customers can now run specialized machine learning workloads like large language models (LLMs) on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) more cost effectively and with less manual configuration. The release of Kubernetes AI toolchain operator automates LLM model deployment on AKS across available CPU and GPU resources by selecting optimally sized infrastructure for the model. It makes it possible to easily split inferencing across multiple lower-GPU-count VMs, increasing the number of Azure regions where workloads can run, eliminating wait times for higher-GPU-count VMs and lowering overall cost. Customers can also choose from preset models with images hosted by AKS, significantly reducing overall inference service setup time.

Additionally, Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager enables multi-cluster and at-scale scenarios for AKS clusters. Platform admins who are managing Kubernetes fleets with many clusters often face challenges staging their updates in a safe and predictable way. This allows admins to orchestrate updates across multiple clusters by using update runs, stages and groups. This is now generally available.

• Breakout: Master Platform Engineering: Architecting Scalable & Resilient Systems
• Demo: Dev-centric automation, AI-Assisted Ops and Cost Optimization in AKS

2.2.6. Azure Native Services update to optimize performance and scale

Azure Native ISV Services enables organizations to access and utilize specialized software and services on Microsoft Azure. These services offer features tailored for cloud performance, seamless integration and operational efficiency between independent software vendor (ISV) software and services native on Azure.

Apache Airflow™ on Astro – an Azure Native ISV Service now in preview – will enable organizations to place Airflow at the core of their data operations, providing ease of use, scalability and enterprise-grade security to help ensure the reliable delivery of mission-critical data pipelines. With the Azure Native ISV Services integration, Astro will be easily available within the Azure portal as a managed service. Instead of managing complex data pipelines, developers will be able to focus on data, code, security and billing across third-party entities. Developers may opt for the pay-as-you-go option based on their usage with billing via the Azure Marketplace.

2.2.7. Microsoft Dev Box introducing new capabilities for customization and setup

Microsoft Dev Box is introducing new capabilities to support greater customization and simplify Dev Box setup for development teams. These new features, now in preview, focus on increasing developer productivity and satisfaction:

• Dev box limits: Developer teams will be able to directly limit the number of dev boxes each developer can create within a project to help manage costs and ensure efficient use of resources.

Additionally, Dev Boxes will connect to new Microsoft hosted networks to simplify network setup by eliminating the need to create, configure and secure a virtual network. IT admins and development teams can also use the new quick create template for a complete, step-by-step guide from initial admin configuration through Dev Box deployment.

Docker, in collaboration with Microsoft, now provides Dev Box-compatible preconfigured images on the Azure Marketplace that have everything needed to build containers with Visual Studio and Docker Desktop.

• Demo: Use customization to personalize Dev Box for you and your team
• Discussion: The ins and outs of deploying Microsoft Dev Box inside Microsoft, Q&A

2.2.8. Microsoft offering guidance to help organizations establish Platform engineering

Platform engineering is an approach that builds on DevOps best practices through tools for automation, tracking, governance and observability to accelerate modern software application delivery.

Organizations need developers to get started and deploy code quickly while also ensuring their software processes are secure, compliant and cost-controlled. Platform engineering capabilities empower developers with more self-service, automated experiences, and operations teams with more standardized, secure and efficient application development infrastructure to ultimately improve developer productivity, governance and time to business value.

Microsoft provides a core set of technology building blocks and learning modules to help organizations get started on their journey to establish a platform engineering practice.

• Breakout: Build a productive and secure AI-powered experience for dev teams
• Discussion: Platform engineering Q&A with the Microsoft platform engineering team

2.2.9. MQTT broker feature, publish-subscribe capabilities now available for Azure Event Grid

Azure Event Grid now supports additional capabilities to help customers capitalize on growing industry scenarios. A key part of this new functionality is the ability to deliver publish-subscribe messaging at scale, which enables flexible consumption patterns for data over HTTP and MQTT protocols. This capability is now generally available.

Reflecting the growing demand for connectivity, integration and analytics between Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cloud-based services, Azure Event Grid’s new MQTT broker feature enables bi-directional communication between MQTT clients at scale, enabling one-to-many, many-to-one and one-to-one messaging patterns using MQTT v3.1.1 and MQTT v5 protocols. This feature is now generally available.

These capabilities allow IoT devices from manufacturing plants, automobiles, retail stores and more to send data to – and receive data from – Azure services and third-party services. To process the data further, users can route IoT data to Azure services, such as Azure Event Hubs, Azure Functions and Azure Logic Apps. Data can also be routed to third-party services via webhooks.

Other new features include:

• Pull delivery for event-driven architectures: This allows customers to process events from highly secure environments without configuring a public end point, controlling the rate and volume of messages consumed, while supporting much larger throughput. This feature is generally available.
• Push delivery to Azure Event Hubs: Event Grid namespaces will support the ability to push events to Azure Event Hubs at high scale through a namespace topic subscription. This enables the development of more distributed applications to send discrete events to ingestion pipelines. This feature is in preview.
• Increased throughput units: To help customers scale to meet the demands of these new scenarios, Event Grid has also increased the number of throughput units available in an Event Grid namespace to 40, meeting the needs of more data-intensive scenarios by providing more capacity. This feature is generally available.

2.2.10. New AI and orchestration capabilities from Azure Communication Services

Azure AI Speech integration into Azure Communication Services Call Automation workflows, generally available in November, will enable AI-assisted experiences for customers calling into a business. By recognizing specific phrases as well as free-form sentences spoken by a customer, businesses will be able to adapt to changing customer needs and help shorten the time customers spend navigating Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus.

Azure Communication Services   job router , generally available in early December, will simplify the development of routing capabilities for inbound customer communications and steering customers to the most suitable point of contact in a business. Whether it’s an agent in a contact center with a specific skill set or an automated service designed to manage routine inquiries, job router will ensure that every customer inquiry is pointed to the most appropriate resource available.

• Pre-recorded: Transform customer experiences with AI-assisted voice, video and chat

2.2.11.New capabilities simplify app migration to Azure App Service for Linux, Windows

Azure App Service is quickly becoming the preferred cloud destination for migrating millions of .NET and Java workloads still running on-premises. New capabilities that simplify app migration for Linux and Windows include:

• Single subnet support for multiple App Service plans is now generally available. Network administrators gain substantial reduction in management overhead thanks to the new capability enabling multiple service plans to connect to a single subnet in a customer’s virtual network.
• WebJobs on Linux is now in preview. WebJobs is a popular feature of Azure App Service that enables users to run background tasks in the Azure App Service without any additional cost. Previously available on Windows, it will extend to Linux, enabling customers to run background or recurring tasks and do things like send email reports or perform image or file processing.
• Extensibility support on Linux is now in preview. Previously available on Windows, it will allow Linux web apps to take advantage of third-party software services on Azure and connect to Azure Native ISV services more easily.
• gRPC, a high-performance, open-source universal RPC framework that now provides full bi-directional streaming support and increased messaging performance over HTTP/2 for web apps running on App Service for Linux is generally available.

2.2.12. New updates for integration of applications, data and processes in Azure

Several new updates have been made throughout Azure offerings, giving users the ability to better integrate their applications, data and processes.

API Management’s Credential Manager , now generally available, simplifies the management of authentication and authorization for both professional developers and citizen developers.

Defender for APIs , a new offering as part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud – a cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), is now generally available. Natively integrating with Azure API Management, security admins gain visibility into the Azure business-critical APIs, understand and improve their security posture, prioritize vulnerability fixes and detect and respond to active runtime threats within minutes using machine learning-powered anomalous and suspicious API usage detections.

Azure Integration Environment , in preview, is a new Azure Service that will offer a unified and streamlined experience for Azure Integration Services, presenting users with a single-pane view of the various components of Azure Integration Services used to build the integration solution. With a unified interface, it will empower users to effortlessly orchestrate and manage diverse components of the Azure Integration Services portfolio tailored to their unique needs.​

Other updates include:

• .NET Framework Custom Code Extensibility for Azure Logic Apps is generally available.
• Application Insights enhancements for Azure Logic Apps are generally available.
• Business process tracking is in preview.
• Discussion: Accelerate innovation with Azure Integration Services Q&A
• Demo: Effective API Management: A Deep Dive on OpenAI + Azure API Management
• Demo: Enhance API Data security with Defender for APIs

3. Edge 3.1. Edge

3.1.1. shared links in edge will provide inbox for links.

Shared links in Microsoft Edge for Business will bring links that have been shared in Microsoft Outlook and Teams to helpful locations, such as the address bar, new tab page and the Edge sidebar. The experience will also be available in the Edge mobile app. Instead of having to hunt through emails and chats or ask a colleague for a link again, users will be able to easily find and open these links within the Edge browser.

Users will easily see recent links shared with them from Outlook and Teams by typing in the address bar or opening a new tab. They can also open a new Shared links pane in the Edge sidebar or in the Edge mobile app to see even more links. From there, they can filter by person, date, link type or the app it came from. Edge will be like an inbox to find and open shared links –providing a quick reference home for links that colleagues have shared.

Shared links in Microsoft Edge for Business is available as prepopulated results in the Edge address bar, is in preview in the Edge new tab page and in Edge mobile and will be coming soon to the sidebar.

4. Microsoft 365 4.1. Microsoft 365 Apps & Services

4.1.1. introducing microsoft sharepoint premium.

As the volume of content grows across every organization in this era of digital transformation and AI, Microsoft is expanding its content management portfolio beyond SharePoint, the market leader in content platforms.

SharePoint Premium , Microsoft’s new AI-powered solution to transform content management, content experiences and get content ready for Microsoft Copilot, a set of tools that help people achieve more using AI, is now in preview and will be generally available early next year. SharePoint Premium will build structure, security and governance to ground an organization’s content, so Copilot has better information to leverage. New features will include:

• Content experiences to help information workers in their flow of work, allowing them to seamlessly discover, interact and collaborate with hundreds of file types , while providing fresh content using AI analytics with branded document packaging.
• Content solutions that optimize critical business processes with AI, security and automated workflows.

SharePoint Premium also includes content processing and content governance services and solutions, with both new and existing capabilities from Microsoft Syntex and Microsoft SharePoint Advanced Management.

SharePoint Premium will expand content management in Microsoft 365 to help organizations get more value from their content throughout the lifecycle and bring content into the flow of work for information workers, IT pros, developers and more. Availability of services included in SharePoint Premium will roll out between now and the first half of 2024.

• Blog: Introducing SharePoint Premium – the future of AI powered content management and experiences
• Breakout: Transform your cloud content experiences: Introducing Microsoft SharePoint Premium

4.1.2. Microsoft Clipchamp and app integrations for Microsoft Designer now available

Microsoft 365 is enabling a new era of visual content creation for commercial customers. With Microsoft Clipchamp and Microsoft Designer , Microsoft 365 is democratizing video and image creation. Intuitive user experiences enhanced by AI make it simple for anyone to create compelling visuals – no experience required.

Microsoft Clipchamp Clipchamp is now generally available for commercial customers and can be accessed by users licensed for Microsoft 365 Enterprise (E3 and E5) and Business (Standard and Premium) suites.

Additionally, Clipchamp Premium features and licensing will become available in December 2023. These features will include 4K exports, organization brand kit capabilities and premium stock content (audio, video and graphics), with more premium features being added in the coming months, including AI-powered features. Customers will also be able to purchase Clipchamp independently of Microsoft 365 as a standalone license.

Microsoft Designer Designer is first coming to commercial customers through integrations in various Microsoft 365 apps, so users can create images within the flow of work. Microsoft 365 Enterprise (E3 and E5) and Business (Standard and Premium) users can now use Designer in Edge. Designer in Teams for creating announcement banners will become available in the coming weeks, and Copilot in Microsoft Designer for use in Word, PowerPoint and Whiteboard will be available by the end of 2023. A preview of the Designer app will become available to commercial customers in the coming months, followed by general availability later next year.

• Pre-recorded: Visual Content Creation for Everyone: Clipchamp and Designer
• Product roundtable: Microsoft Stream and Clipchamp

4.1.3. Microsoft Loop now generally available with updated features

The Microsoft Loop app is now generally available for the web and mobile (iOS and Android) for commercial customers. The Loop mobile app (iOS and Android) is generally available for consumer customers as well. Full functionality is available to business customers as part of their Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium Licenses.

Recent improvements and new capabilities for the Loop app include:

• Workspace status: Currently in private preview, Workspace status will provide information such as upcoming deadlines and status changes to provide a simple overview and help people know where to direct their attention.
• Workspace descriptions: When a workspace is created, Loop will intelligently surface files and documents that may be related to the project. A more descriptive prompt can be included with the workspace title to return more refined results and kick off a workspace with everything that’s needed. This capability is in preview.
• Power Automate: Loop will integrate Power Automate to help simplify task tracking and project management. A new rule can be created in a Loop table enabling automatic notifications to be sent when the table is updated. This automation will help teams stay on track while saving time to focus on what matters. This capability is in preview.
• Start a workspace from Teams: After a Teams meeting, a Loop workspace will be able to be created and will be automatically populated with the related documents and notes from the meeting, helping a team get started on their project easily. This capability will be in preview by the end of 2023.
• See also: 5.8.1. New capabilities in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365
• Demo: More effective meetings and collaboration with Loop + Teams
• Pre-recorded: Microsoft Loop: Transforming the way we work together
• Product roundtable: Microsoft Loop: help transform the future of co-creation
• Product roundtable: Microsoft Loop integrations with apps outside of Microsoft 365
• Product roundtable: Microsoft Loop: compliance and admin controls

4.1.4. New updates to Microsoft 365 for frontline workers

Microsoft 365 for frontline workers helps support employee experiences in communications and operational efficiency. New updates to the tool include:

Copilot (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) with commercial data protection will be available to all Microsoft Entra ID users starting with F3 licenses in December. This new tool will bring AI-powered web searches, answers and content generation for frontline workers. And with commercial data protection, frontline workers will be able to make smart requests, like looking up inventory or summarizing large internal documents, without worrying they are sharing company data.

Shifts plugin for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365: Frontline managers will be able to quickly get a list of important items, specific to their team and location, to speed up time-consuming tasks such as covering shifts and onboarding new employees. Shifts plugin for Copilot for Microsoft 365 will use prompts to retrieve insights for frontline managers, leveraging data from the Shifts app, in addition to user and company data it has access to, like Teams chat history, SharePoint, emails and more. This feature will be generally available in December 2023.

Deploy and manage frontline teams with dynamic membership capabilities: Generally available in December, admins will be able to better deploy their frontline by provisioning frontline worker accounts and their teams with group membership in the Teams admin center. Using dynamic groups from Microsoft Entra ID, admins will automatically be kept up to date as people enter, move within or leave the organization. This dynamic membership makes it easy to set up a consistent Teams channel structure to optimize strong frontline collaboration from day one.

Deploy Shifts at scale: A new deployment tool to deploy and manage shifts for frontline workforce across multiple locations in the Teams admin center will be in preview in December. Users will be able to standardize time-off reasons, schedule groups and shift settings across all frontline teams.

Simple authorization with domain-less sign-in: Frontline workers will be able to sign in to Teams faster using only their employee ID, without having to type long domain names. This will be simple for frontline workers to use and easy to manage and deploy to reduce distribution and management overhead for IT admins. This feature will be available in preview in early 2024.

• Breakout: Reimagine the frontline with next-generation AI and fast deployment
• Breakout: Transforming service organizations with generative AI

4.1.5. The new Microsoft Planner brings together to-dos, tasks, plans and projects

Microsoft is bringing together Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner and Microsoft Project for the web into a single, unified experience called Microsoft Planner . This experience will first be available in the Planner app in Microsoft Teams in spring 2024, followed by web experiences later in 2024. Powerful, collaborative, scalable and assisted by next-generation AI, the new Planner will help everyone effectively manage their work and achieve their goals.

The new Planner experience will scale easily from collaborative task management to robust project management, empowering everyone, from information workers to frontline workers to project managers, so they can manage their work in one place and accelerate business outcomes with AI-enabled capabilities. Benefits will include:

• The ability to easily find tasks, so users can focus on the tasks they need to get done today.
• Helping users work the way they want. Whether for individual tasks or team initiatives, Planner will enable them to choose the approach that’s best for their needs.
• Creating project plans with powerful scheduling and resourcing tools. As plans evolve, Planner will offer a menu of capabilities to meet unique business needs.
• Copilot in Planner will help users get started with a plan faster with simple prompts and as the plan evolves, it will add goals and intelligently suggest new tasks to help keep users informed on progress.

In addition, the Tasks by Planner and To Do app in Microsoft Teams is being renamed Planner. Microsoft Project for the web will also be renamed over the coming months. Users of Project for the web can continue to use and enjoy the features they know, under the new name Planner.

The new Planner app in Microsoft Teams with premium work management capabilities and AI-powered experiences will be generally available in spring 2024, with the web experience coming later.

• Discussion: The future of AI-enabled work management with Microsoft Planner
• Demo: Using Copilot in Microsoft Planner for simple and advanced projects
• Pre-recorded: The new Microsoft Planner: Bring together to-dos, plans and projects

4.2. Microsoft Teams

4.2.1. immersive spaces in teams generally available in january.

Immersive spaces in Microsoft Teams, currently in preview, will be generally available in January 2024. Immersive spaces in Teams will bring the power of Mesh into the place where people work every day – Microsoft Teams. From the View menu in a Teams meeting, users can easily transform a 2D meeting into an immersive 3D experience.

Key capabilities in immersive spaces in Teams will include:

• Avatars: Choose an avatar previously built for standard 2D Teams meetings or create a new one. Avatars are easy to customize to reflect a person’s appearance, style or mood for the day.
• 3D environments: Choose from one of the ready-made 3D environments based on meeting needs, whether it’s a big team, social gathering or a small round-table discussion.
• Seat assignments: Select where to sit in a meeting or event to drive connections with others.
• Spatial audio and audio zones: Have multiple, simultaneous conversations and communicate effectively in subgroups without talking over each other.
• Interactive activities: Play built-in interactive games within immersive spaces. Designated areas include spaces to roast marshmallows, throw beanbags, answer icebreaker questions and more.
• Live reactions : Use live reactions, such as hearts, thumbs up or clap, during discussions.
• Blog: Learn more about what’s new in Microsoft Teams.
• Breakout: Get ready for the future of work with Microsoft Teams

4.2.2. Microsoft Mesh generally available in January

Microsoft Mesh , currently in preview, will be generally available in January 2024. With Mesh, users will be able to create custom immersive spaces tailored to specific business needs, such as employee events, trainings, guided tours and internal product showcases. Using a no-code editor, customers will be able to easily customize an immersive event or the Mesh toolkit to leverage the power of Unity for fully customizable experience.

With the Mesh editor, users will be able to customize immersive experiences to address the unique needs of the event without writing a line of code. Event creators will be able to select from a set of ready-to-use immersive spaces, customize them by adding images, videos and screen share in a shared 3D canvas, and have them show up in an event in an orchestrated way. Once these objects are added, change the size and position, or put the video on loop so it fits right into the event. These customizations can then be saved as a template for anyone in the organization to reuse.

At general availability, additional capabilities will make it easier for speakers to interact with attendees when hosting immersive events in Mesh. Event organizers will be able to facilitate a Q&A session by enabling attendees to raise hands. Organizers will see the list of hands raised, in order, and will be able to call on participants, engaging them directly. When called on, attendees will be effectively seen and heard by everyone in the event. This makes immersive events more effective and engaging, and brings elements of real-life town hall experiences where organizers can facilitate a Q&A during an event.

The ability to customize immersive spaces in Mesh will be available in Teams Premium.

4.2.3. New features and enhancements in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams enables effective collaboration and communication for more than 320 million users around the world. New features in Teams bring a smarter, more personalized and simpler experience.

New Teams meeting features include:

• Voice isolation in Teams meetings and calls: This AI-driven feature is an advanced noise suppression capability that leverages user’s voice profiles and suppresses other people’s voices in the background during a Teams meeting or call. AI in Teams will recognize an individual’s voice and filter only their voice in Teams meetings and calls. This feature rollout has begun and will be generally available in early 2024.
• Decorate your background: Meeting participants will be able to use generative background effects in Teams to show up at their best – even when the space they’re working from isn’t at its best. With Decorate your background, meeting participants can use the power of AI to generate a background that decorates and enhances their real-world room, by cleaning up clutter or adding plants to a wall. This feature will be available early next year in Teams Premium.

Teams chat and channels enhancements, which are rolling out now through January 2024 include:

• Customize default reactions: Users will have the flexibility to change and select their default emoji reactions in Teams chat, as well as reduce the number of reactions in their interface.
• Forward chat: Users will be able to easily share a message received with another colleague by simply clicking on the message and selecting forward from the menu.
• Group chat profile picture: Users will have a better way to reflect their team and group chat topic with custom pictures. Group chat members can upload an image or use pre-selected illustrations and emojis.
• Loop components in channels: When composing a post in a channel, users will be able to easily co-create and collaborate on Loop components such as tables, lists, progress trackers and more.
• Channel announcement background: Users will be able to create a personalized announcement background that harnesses creativity and engages teams in new ways. Users will be able to add images, type a description or use the power of AI to generate a personalized background. Creating an image using generative AI will be available in Teams Premium and Copilot.

New Teams Phone features include:

• Private line: Now in general availability, users can have a private second phone number for a select set of callers so they can make calls directly to a specified contact, bypassing delegates, admins or assistants. Inbound calls to the private line will be distinguished by a unique ringtone and notification.
• Protected voicemail: To ensure users don’t miss important voicemails with sensitive information, users will now receive notifications for protected voicemails in the Calls app in Teams with a link to access the voicemail securely in the Outlook web app. This is now generally available.
• New Teams Phone offers in India: For customers who have employees based in India, Microsoft is working with local operators – Airtel, Tata Communications Limited and Tata Tele Business Services – which will be launching their Teams Phone-powered solutions in compliance with regulatory requirements in the market. These solutions will provide employees with greater calling flexibility and will support work-from-home scenarios as well.

Updates to create a simpler and easier Teams experience include:

• Microsoft Teams web experience: Microsoft recently released the new Teams app for Windows and Mac, and now, the new Teams web experience is generally available for web customers who use Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, providing a faster and simpler Teams experience to help users save time and collaborate more efficiently. New Teams is reimagined from the ground up to deliver up to two times faster performance while using 50 percent less memory. From redesigning channels and simplifying notifications to enhancing personalization options, the new Teams web experience offers a simpler and responsive user experience that’s easier to navigate and accomplish with fewer clicks.
• New Teams keyboard shortcuts: New keyboard shortcuts in Teams will save users time when composing a message, navigating in the app, taking an action in a chat and channels or changing a setting. New shortcuts include Alt+Shift+D to set status to Do not disturb and Alt+Shift+R to reply quickly to the latest message received. The full list of keyboard shortcuts is available, and new shortcuts will be generally available by January 2024.
• Code block enhancements: New enhancements to code blocks will make it easier for users to send code in Teams. Users will be able to start a code block using the entry point in format options or by using markdown. Users can pick/change the code language for syntax highlighting when pasting or writing code. This update will be generally available by January 2024.
• Simplified notifications: Users will be able to clear notifications with a single click in activity, chat and channels and customize Teams notification settings to quickly identify what matters most. This update will be generally available in January 2024.
• Manage your teams and channels: Users can easily manage the channels list in Teams to focus on what matters most. When starting a new collaboration space, users will be prompted to create a channel,  and when joining a new team users can choose only the channels they would like to show in the channel list. When a channel is no longer active or relevant, a user can archive the channel, and it will be hidden and closed for further action, but the information can still be accessed. This update will be generally available in January 2024.
• Private team discovery: Admins will be able to make private teams discoverable in their organization. Users can view and search for these private teams through the “Join team gallery” in their client. This update will be generally available in January 2024.
• Shared channels enhancements: To make it easier to collaborate with external stakeholders, admins are able to set up a form that captures the user’s request to add an external member who is not from an approved organization. Team members can also create shared channels , if the channel owner permits it. Users can share direct links to a channel, post or reply . This update will be generally available in January 2024.
• Teams AI library: Teams AI library, a new feature for app developers, is now generally available for JavaScript and .NET. The Teams AI library simplifies building engaging conversational apps in Microsoft 365. The library helps app developers build intelligent bots and message extensions powered by AI and large language models.
• Blog: Learn more about what’s new in Microsoft Teams .

4.2.4. New features streamline IT management for Teams experiences

Several new features have been developed for Microsoft Teams to help streamline processes for IT admins and organizations and include:

Teams Rooms low-friction deployment: Teams Rooms can now be deployed using Windows Autopilot , in private preview, reducing deployment times from days to just a few hours. For devices that can’t use Autopilot, Microsoft is introducing a simplified deployment option with one-time passwords (OTPs), 16-digit codes that will eliminate the risk of sharing access credentials. OTP will be generally available in November. Remote Access is coming to the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal and will allow remote troubleshooting and proactive maintenance, monitoring device health and preventing issues before they affect meetings.

Simplifying Teams Phone deployment with shared calling: Shared calling allows admins to enable groups of users to make and receive public switched telephone network (PSTN) calls using a shared phone number and calling plan. With shared calling, a single phone number and calling plan can be shared across a team of users whether that’s a team of 10 people in a small office or 10,000 users in an enterprise department – they just need to have a Teams Phone license through either Microsoft 365 E5 or Teams Phone Standard. This feature is generally available.

Advanced Collaboration Tools: Advanced Collaboration Tools in Teams Premium empower IT admins to provide a more secure and self-regulated environment. Priority account chat controls , in preview, empower users to manage unwanted internal communications via policies setting. Users are notified about chats from new contacts, giving them a choice to accept or block the conversations.  Advanced collaboration analytics , now generally available, offers deep insights into external collaboration behaviors. It empowers Teams admins to facilitate successful collaboration and mitigate potential risks of external collaboration.

• Blog: Learn more about Advanced Collaboration Tools.
• Blog: Learn more about updates to Teams Phone.
• Pre-recorded: Microsoft Teams Phone: the smart calling solution for Teams

4.3. Microsoft Viva

4.3.1. updates to viva engage and viva amplify.

Viva Engage and Viva Amplify are tools to allow organizations to connect everyone through employee communities and conversations to build meaningful relationships and give company messages needed volume. Updates to both platforms include:

• Multi-tenant organization (MTO) communication: Viva Engage supports MTO cross-tenant communication to make it easier for leaders to communicate and engage at scale to build community across the organization. Leaders can send a storyline announcement across tenants to share the same story to all stakeholders. Responding, reacting and analytics will be supported for cross-tent posts. This update is now generally available.
• Publish from Viva Amplify to Viva Engage: This integration will allow for publishing from Viva Amplify to Viva Engage communities and storylines. It will also incorporate content shared to Engage within reports in Viva Amplify. This update will be available in private preview early next year.
• Viva Goals and Viva Engage integration: The integration will bring mission, alignment and results into communities and conversation by helping customers build communities around goals, view goal progress from Viva Goals directly in Viva Engage and create divisional communities within Viva Engage designed to help leaders better communicate top-down interactions and initiatives, including delivering praise based on goal progress and achievement. This update will be generally available in the first half of 2024.
• Seeded and AI-connected knowledge in Answers: This update will allow users to use AI to generate questions and answers from existing files and import them into Answers . Also, AI will automatically route open questions to people who might have the answer. Users can identify the right topics for a question, see top similar responses before publishing, and aid in routing to experts. This update will start rolling out later this year.
• Viva Amplify updates: Viva Amplify will include publication templates for campaigns, adds localization in more than 50 languages and will include better reporting from system data to incorporate custom data from HR tools into filtering and reports. This update will be generally available in December.
• Discussion: AI in Viva Engage

5. Microsoft Copilot 5.1. Azure Data

5.1.1. introducing copilot in microsoft fabric.

Microsoft Fabric is being infused with  Azure OpenAI Service  at every layer to help customers unlock the full potential of their data, enabling developers to leverage the power of generative AI against their data and assisting business users to find insights in their data.

With Copilot in Microsoft Fabric in every data experience, customers will be able to use conversational language to create dataflows and data pipelines, generate code and entire functions, build machine learning models or visualize results. Customers will even be able to create their own conversational language experiences that combine Azure OpenAI Service models and their data, and publish them as plugins.

Copilot in Fabric, now in preview, will build on Microsoft’s existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise. Copilot inherits an organization’s security, compliance and privacy policies. Microsoft does not use an organization’s tenant data to train the base language models that power Copilot.

• Keynote: AI transformation for your organization with the Microsoft Cloud
• Breakout: Build powerful AI apps with Copilot in Microsoft Fabric

5.2. Azure Management & Operations

5.2.1. microsoft copilot for azure boosts productivity with generative ai.

Microsoft Copilot for Azure, now in preview, is an AI companion that will simplify how users design, operate, optimize and troubleshoot applications and infrastructure from cloud to edge.

With Copilot for Azure, customers will gain new insights into their workloads, unlock untapped Azure functionality and orchestrate tasks across both cloud and edge. Copilot will leverage large language models (LLMs), the Azure control plane and insights about a user’s Azure and Arc-enabled assets. All of this is carried out within the framework of Azure’s steadfast commitment to safeguarding the customer’s data security and privacy.

• Blog: Simplify IT management with Microsoft Copilot for Azure – save time and get answers fast
• Breakout: Simplifying cloud operations with the Azure Portal
• Discussion: Leveraging AI to manage your workloads with new Azure management tools

5.3.1. Bringing Copilot to everyone

The efforts to simplify the user experience and make Copilot more accessible to everyone starts with Bing, Microsoft’s leading experience for the web. Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise will now simply become Copilot. For Microsoft Entra customers, Copilot in Bing, Edge and Windows adds commercial data protection. Copilot will be out of preview and become generally available starting December 1. Over time, Microsoft will also expand eligibility of Copilot with commercial data protection to even more Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) users at no additional cost.

5.4. Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service

5.4.1. introducing microsoft copilot for service.

The power of generative AI is being extended to business user workflows with the introduction of Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service. These copilots are designed to help organizational functions reinvent business processes with AI and stay in the flow of work. Both Copilots will include a license for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, allowing for generative AI support across all workflows to surface business insights, accelerate decision-making and create materials, such as briefs or customer communications, all with context rooted in data from existing CRM systems of records, knowledge repositories, third-party applications and Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Copilot for Service is a new business copilot that will help extend existing contact centers with generative AI to boost agent productivity. Copilot for Service will include Copilot for Microsoft 365 and will integrate with third-party CRM and contact center solutions. Organizations will be able to simply point to their data, such as trusted websites, knowledgebase articles, files and, more importantly, data sources from their existing contact center, and in a few minutes unlock generative AI-powered conversations across all their data. Copilot for Service will include out-of-the-box integrations with Salesforce, ServiceNow and Zendesk, and will be extended to other systems with more than 1,000 pre-built and custom connectors.

During customer interactions, agents will be able to ask Copilot for Service questions in natural language and receive relevant insights pulled from customer and product data sourced from knowledge repositories. This will improve the speed at which agents can meaningfully assist and resolve cases, providing better experiences for both agents and customers. And since Copilot for Service will include Copilot for Microsoft 365, these productivity resources will be delivered in the tools agents already use every day, such as Outlook and Teams, as well as third-party agent desktops of choice like Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk and others.

• Demo: Discover how Dynamics 365 Copilot empowers service teams
• Discussion: Learn how Dynamics 365 Copilot unlocks modern service experiences

5.4.2. Microsoft Copilot for Sales will boost enhancements and integration partnerships

Microsoft Sales Copilot ,  already generally available and being used by 15,000 organizations including Rockwell Automation, Netlogic and Avanade, helps sellers create more personalized customer engagements and increase productivity. Building off this success, Microsoft is today announcing the new Microsoft Copilot for Sales, which will include licenses for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Copilot for Sales will help sellers by leveraging the power of generative AI across Microsoft 365 apps, CRM systems of record and other relevant third-party data sources via Power Platform connectors.

Copilot for Sales capabilities will include access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 that will bring the power of both Copilots to allow sellers to harness the benefits of generative AI across all workflows and productivity surfaces, such as Microsoft Teams and Word in a newly integrated experience.

• Meeting recaps in Teams will combine insights from Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Microsoft 365 to surface action items, task creation and conversation KPIs.
• Copilot for Sales will be able to create a meeting preparation brief by pulling relevant information into a Word document, including a summary of the account and opportunity, names and titles of meeting participants, open tasks related to the opportunity, relevant highlights from recent meetings, relevant email threads and more.
• Blog: Introducing new Copilot experiences to boost productivity and elevate customer experiences across the organization 
• Breakout: Transform customer experience with Dynamics 365 and next-generation AI
• Discussion: Discuss the extensible architecture of copilots in sales and marketing
• Demo: See the latest enhancements with Copilot in sales and marketing

5.5. Dynamics 365

5.5.1. new capabilities and integrated offerings for copilot in dynamics 365 field service.

Dynamics 365 Field Service, which helps businesses transform their service operations and improve customer experiences through AI, mixed reality and the Internet of Things (IoT), has several new Copilot capabilities and integrated offerings. They include:

Improved technician productivity with next-generation AI In preview beginning December 2023, frontline workers will be able to access key work order information by asking Copilot questions within Microsoft Teams. Using natural language, they will be able to simply state what they need to receive specific information related to work orders in Dynamics 365 Field Service, including status updates, parts needed or instructions to help them get the job done.

Additionally with the Dynamics 365 Field Service app in Teams , generally available in December, frontline workers will be able to view and edit their work orders in the flow of work in Teams. Copilot will also become generally available to assist frontline managers with work order scheduling in Microsoft Teams, saving time and effort to find the right worker for the job.

With the preview of new Copilot capabilities in Dynamics 365 Field Service mobile in December, frontline technicians will be able to quickly get a summary of key points in a work order without having to navigate through a series of tabs. They will be able to swiftly make progress updates by simply speaking to Copilot and describing what they did. Copilot will provide suggestions to efficiently check off service tasks, add notes and update product quantities as well as statuses, accelerating data-entry so technicians can focus on providing great customer service.

Streamlined manager workflows with next-generation AI Introduced in preview earlier this year and becoming generally available in December, Copilot capabilities in the Dynamics 365 Field Service Outlook add-in for frontline managers will streamline work order creation with relevant details pre-populated from emails, as well as optimize technician scheduling with data-driven recommendations based on factors such as travel time, availability and skillset, without switching apps. Relevant work orders are surfaced within this experience for managers to review before creating new work orders, and these can be easily rescheduled or updated as customer needs change.

Introduced in preview earlier this year and now generally available, a redesigned Dynamics 365 Field Service work order management experience brings important information front and center – reducing the number of clicks for key tasks by more than a third. Additionally, Copilot is available in preview within this experience to provide frontline managers intelligent recaps so they can stay up to date without having to navigate through all the information in a work order.

Efficiencies with more integrated offerings Seamless financial and inventory data flow between Dynamics 365 Field Service, Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management will help ensure the frontline and back-office operations stay in sync. By syncing real-time price and cost information from work orders, and automatically updating financial and inventory data as work orders are executed, this integration, in preview, will reduce the effort required to connect these Dynamics 365 apps.

Beginning December 2023, Dynamics 365 Field Service customers can get access to Dynamics 365 Guides and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist at no additional cost. Users will be able to create guides to provide technicians with step-by-step instructions for key tasks and enable real-time collaboration with remote experts via mobile or HoloLens 2 devices when additional assistance is needed. Also, customers can purchase Dynamics 365 Field Service Contractor to provide essential work order management functionality to vendors as they scale field service operations to meet demand.

• Blog: Learn more about these updates .

5.5.2. New Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales features

Two new Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales experiences will allow sellers to interact with their data using natural language and include:

• The ability for sellers to use natural language with Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales to get contextual insights and recommendations for leads and opportunities, in addition to using pre-built prompts previously announced. This feature is in preview.
• A full-screen view for Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales where sellers will be able to use natural language or pre-built prompts to gain a quick understanding of customers, deals, meetings, forecasts and more. This experience will roll out starting in November in Asia and Europe and will continue into other markets at later dates.
• While Copilot in Dynamics 365 Sales already integrates with popular seller tools like People.ai, Copilot now takes that a step further with extensibility for independent software vendors (ISVs) who can leverage Power Platform Connectors to integrate into Opportunity Summary view in Outlook . These are already being used by DocuSign and PROS to bring relevant contract details, and pricing and quotes, respectively, into Outlook .

5.5.3. New features, enhancements and partnerships for Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, which uses real-time data and next-generation AI to help marketers understand their customers and create personalized experiences, has several new features and updates, all in preview over the next month and include:

Deeper customer understanding and connected marketing and sales capabilities . Marketers will be able to now qualify their leads using metrics, such as engagement scores, and easily hand off to their sellers to help ensure marketing and sales teams maximize the opportunity pipeline and increase win rates.

Sellers will benefit from AI-generated customer profile summaries from their customer data platform application that summarize key components of customer profiles, including demographic, transactional, behavioral and analytics data, to generate key insights for quick customer understanding.

Integration partnerships with Optimizely . Organizations will be able to leverage segments and journeys built in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights in Optimizely to create campaigns that can be personalized in real-time without writing any code. With bi-directional integrations, organizations will be able to provide hyper-personalized omnichannel experiences to their customers across web, social, email and offline channels.

5.6.1. Simplify management of Edge for Business with Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin center

Copilot will be coming to the Edge management service via Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin center to provide an intelligent management experience for Edge for Business. Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin center will provide a shared experience across other Microsoft 365 admin centers as well, including SharePoint, Teams and more, to create a cohesive Copilot experience across Microsoft 365 management services for IT admins.

Currently available in private preview, Copilot in the Edge management service will give guidance to IT admins on recommended policies and extensions for their users. More capabilities will be added in the future.

• Product roundtable: Shaping the future of admin experiences in Copilot

5.7. Industry Cloud

5.7.1. copilot in dynamics 365 guides brings mixed reality and ai to real-world operations.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides is a new capability that will bring the power of mixed reality and generative AI to real-world operations, enabling frontline workers to address issues faster with the combined power of AI, mixed reality and the Microsoft Cloud.

Copilot will enable field service technicians and operators in manufacturing and service industries to converse with AI using natural language. The AI, powered by Azure OpenAI Service, will pull from a curated set of documentation to serve up relevant information based on the task at hand. That information could include things like help with troubleshooting, step-by-step procedural guidance, detailed information, service work history, current device readings or completion of work order forms. Holographic overlays will allow workers to accomplish tasks seamlessly without breaking the flow of work.

With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Guides, organizations will be able to:

• Improve operational efficiency by enabling workers with the right information at the right time within the flow of work. With the ability to point and ask, frontline workers will be able to point at a component on a machine that needs service or repairs, ask questions and receive intelligent answers that help them resolve issues faster and reduce on-the-job frustration.
• Accelerate the onboarding of new workers and upskill existing workforce effectively with an immersive and intelligent learning platform in mixed reality, which improves confidence in executing a task while reducing cognitive overload. The capability will help create personalized, role-based training to accelerate onboarding time and reduce the need for retraining.
• Seamlessly capture, integrate and democratize institutional knowledge into existing workflows and access detailed repair guidance, historical service data and best practices in real time, helping to ensure consistent, high-quality maintenance while minimizing errors.
• Enable frontline workers to access and update forms and systems of record associated with their work and the equipment they’re working on, without leaving the flow of work.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Guides is currently in private preview on HoloLens 2.

5.8. Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365

5.8.1. new capabilities in microsoft copilot for microsoft 365.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an AI assistant at work. It automatically inherits an organization’s security, compliance and privacy policies for Microsoft 365. Data is managed in line with Microsoft’s current commitments. I t’s integrated into the Microsoft 365 apps millions of people use every day —Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is already used by tens of thousands of enterprise users in the Early Access Program, including customers at companies like Visa and KPMG and is now generally available for enterprise customers.

New capabilities for Copilots include:

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard As organizations invest in AI productivity tools, leaders need clear visibility into how employees are leveraging AI and how is it transforming their organization’s productivity. They need to ensure these tools are being used to their full potential. Microsoft Copilot Dashboard, powered by Microsoft Viva, will help leaders answer how copilot is affecting their organization and changing the way people work. This dashboard will enable leaders and organizations to plan their copilot readiness, drive adoption and measure the impact of Copilot for Microsoft 365. It’s available as part of Microsoft 365 subscriptions starting today and coming to the Viva Insights app in Teams and on the web in December 2023.

Copilot in Microsoft Teams With the combined power of Copilot in Microsoft Whiteboard and Copilot in Teams, meeting participants will be able to visualize meeting discussions. In addition to live summarization and notes during a Teams meeting, coming next year, Copilot will be able to visualize spoken discussion points and organize them in Whiteboard .  Copilot will be able to turn meeting participants’ spoken ideas and topics into a visual collaboration space in Whiteboard that can be shared across all meeting participants. Copilot will be able to suggest more ideas to add to Whiteboard as the meeting conversation happens. The captured content on Whiteboard will be saved as a Microsoft Whiteboard file, accessible via Teams, OneDrive for Business and directly via the Whiteboard app. For Copilot licensed users, a Copilot-generated summary of the Whiteboard will be able to be shared as a Loop component in Outlook, Word, Teams and more.

Copilot in Teams meetings will be able to take notes throughout a meeting and share with all participants during a Teams meeting. Users will be able to add shared meeting notes and agenda items in Collaborative notes. Collaborative notes are Loop components which stay in sync across all the places they’ve been shared. When enabled before the meeting, Copilot will automatically take live notes within Collaborative notes, so attendees can focus on the discussion. These notes will be shared with meeting participants and Copilot users will be able to ask for more specific notes like “Capture what Beth said as a quote.” Only one meeting participant will be required to have the Copilot license for the notes to be viewable and editable to all meeting participants. This capability will roll out next year in the Teams desktop and web app.

Copilot in Teams can be used during Teams meetings without retaining transcription. In the Teams admin center, admins can now assign a policy to enable Copilot with or without transcription, and meeting organizers can set their preference before the meeting starts. When enabled without transcription, Copilot can be used during the meeting to ask any question about the meeting, and after the meeting ends no transcript or Copilot interactions will be retained. Since no transcript is retained after the meeting, neither intelligent recap nor Copilot will be available after the meeting when this policy is enabled. This capability is generally available.

Copilot in Microsoft Teams channels, now generally available, enables users to quickly synthesize key information from a past conversation and have it summarized, with organized key discussion points. The summary of information includes citations, to keep users aware of the source.

The new Copilot compose box in Teams chat and channels, now generally available, serves as a writing assistant to help edit messages. Copilot can help rewrite messages, adapt the tone and modify length of the message before the user sends it.

In July, Copilot in Teams Phone was announced, allowing users to get real-time summarization and insights during calls. Users will soon be able to access Copilot from the Calls app in Teams to generate summaries, action items or ask any specific questions about the conversation after a call has wrapped up. The Copilot post-call experience in the Calls app will be supported for both VoIP and PSTN calls.

Copilot in Microsoft Outlook Copilot in Microsoft Outlook will make it possible to do more in less time and with less effort. The new Copilot features help will help users prepare and schedule meetings.

Here is how it will work:

• Preparing for meetings : Copilot will be able to generate a detailed summary of upcoming meetings based on the invite, related emails and attached files, making it easier to get ready for the meeting in minutes.
• Scheduling meetings : Copilot will make it easy to schedule a follow-up meeting or any other meeting from an email summary. Either click the suggested action or chat with Copilot to set up a meeting. Copilot will be able to create an agenda, a title, a list of attendees and a context for the meeting. It will also be able to find the best available times for everyone.

Copilot in Outlook will begin to roll out in early 2024.

Copilot in Microsoft Loop Copilot in Loop will be able to use information from a document linked in the prompt to generate even more relevant responses. This capability is currently rolling out for customers with a Copilot license and will be available for the web. It will also be able to intelligently adapt previous Loop pages to new projects, creating custom templates. This capability will roll out next year for customers with a Copilot license, and the updates are in preview.

Copilot in Microsoft Word Catchup and comments in Copilot in Word will help users comprehend what has changed in a document by asking questions like, “How do I see what has changed in this document?” to reveal changes and revisions made by anyone who has accessed the document. It will also use information from Microsoft Graph to create more personalization by considering user preferences, interests and other information. These updates will be available early 2024.

• Blog: Introducing Microsoft Copilot Studio and new features in Copilot for Microsoft 365
• Blog: Microsoft Loop: built for the new way of work, generally available to Microsoft 365 work accounts
• Keynote: Unlock Productivity with Microsoft Copilot
• Breakout: Transform copilot development
• Demo: Build conversational experiences with generative AI

5.8.2. Extend and enrich Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 with plugins and connectors

With Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, users will be able to expand skills and knowledge of Copilot via plugins and Microsoft Graph connectors, now in preview. Users will be able to install and enable plugins to extend the game-changing abilities of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with internal and third-party applications they use every day.

Microsoft 365 admins will be able to deploy Microsoft Graph connectors and have their data semantically surfaced by Copilot in response to user prompts. Users will benefit from fast, semantic retrieval of relevant data that is managed within the data governance boundaries of their Microsoft 365 tenant.

Copilot-generated responses will provide the right citations and attributions that will help users trace and access the source content. Several plugins and Graph connectors, including Web search powered by Bing, Microsoft Dataverse, Jira, Trello, Mural, Confluence, Freshworks and Priority Matrix and more are now available. Also, customers like KPMG, Air India and Avanade, among others, are developing custom plugins for their business needs, providing them with the benefits of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with their line-of-business applications for their users.

Plugins can be installed by users via the app store in Teams, Outlook and Microsoft365.com, and Graph connectors can be installed by IT from Microsoft 365 admin center.

New controls in Microsoft 365 admin center, now generally available, enable admins to discover and manage plugins for Microsoft Copilot, a set of tools that people help achieve more using AI . Microsoft 365 admins can also now quickly and easily identify available plugins for Microsoft Copilot, enabled for users in the tenant, and set appropriate access policies for user activation. Independent software vendor (ISV) and internally developed apps with plugin capabilities are automatically highlighted for admin review. Plugin access controls are centrally managed and can be set by user, group and tenant wide.

Developers will be able to build plugins for Microsoft Copilot via Teams message extensions to extend Copilot for Microsoft 365. Developers will be able to build or enhance Teams Message Extensions with Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code and get plugins to extend Copilot for Microsoft 365. Message extensions must use manifest version 1.13 or above. Additionally, developers will be able to build Teams message extensions directly from APIs. API-based message extensions will extend Copilot in the future. This capability is in preview.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 developer sandbox is now available in private preview. Copilot for Microsoft 365 developer sandbox SKU will enable developers to build and test plugins and Graph connectors in a non-production tenant environment. The SKU is in private preview and available for purchase by independent software vendors (ISVs) in the Microsoft 365 TAP program and Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers .

Microsoft 365 and Copilot program to publish apps and plugins for Microsoft 365 is available in preview in Partner Center. Independent software vendors (ISVs) will be able to submit apps that include Copilot plugins and Graph connectors for Teams, Outlook and more to the new Microsoft 365 and Copilot program. Developers will be able to package plugins and Graph connectors into the same unified app manifest and publish their app to Partner Center. Upon app validation, these apps will be made available in Microsoft 365 admin center, where administrators can discover and enable for their users. Users can discover the apps and plugins through the app store in Teams, Outlook and Microsoft365.com.

• Blog: Learn more about Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 plugins and connectors
• Blog: Learn more on the Microsoft 365 Developer blog .
• Breakout: Extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with your line of business apps and data
• Discussion: Ask early adopters: Building LOB plug-ins for Microsoft 365 Copilot

5.8.3. Introducing Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin in private preview

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin is a set of experiences that will harness the value of generative AI to boost Microsoft 365 admins’ productivity by streamlining daily work, so admins are empowered to focus on their strategic priorities, make faster decisions and maximize the value of their investments.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin is designed to help IT admins simplify their admin tasks, generate insights faster and get more out of Microsoft 365. Copilot can help admins navigate the vast array of tools, controls and configurations to quickly guide an admin to exactly where they need to go, offer up suggestions and guidance and simplify reporting and querying by surfacing information through natural language prompts – all in a seamless experience across Microsoft 365 admin center, specialized admin centers and more to meet admins where they are in the flow of work.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin for enterprise customers in the Microsoft 365 admin center, including Edge and Windows Update management service, Teams admin center, Exchange admin center and SharePoint admin center, is in private preview.

• Blog: Ignite 2023 – What’s New for Copilot and Microsoft 365 admins
• Demo: Empowering Microsoft 365 admins with new AI-powered experiences
• Pre-recorded: What’s new for Microsoft 365 admins

5.8.4. Introducing Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft Copilot Studio is an end-to-end conversational AI platform that empowers users to create and customize copilots using natural language or a graphical interface. Copilot Studio is the perfect companion for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, putting IT in control, while ensuring predictability of responses for key topics.

With Copilot Studio, users will be able to easily design, test and publish copilots that suit specific needs and preferences. Users will be able to leverage the power of generative AI to dynamically create multi-turn answers over data and dialogues that are engaging and relevant for users, and to add specific conversations for predictable scenarios that require authored responses and workflows, such as expense management, HR onboarding or IT services.

Copilot Studio will also enable users to link copilots with the broader Microsoft Conversational AI stack through integrations with Azure AI Studio and additional Azure services. This will allow users to access advanced features, like speech recognition, sentiment analysis, entity extraction and more, while having full visibility and control with built-in governance.

Copilot Studio will provide an intuitive and integrated design studio experience for makers. With plugin builder, makers will be able to create, manage and test plugins, including Power Platform connectors and Power Automate flows. With prompt builder, makers will be able to create custom prompts, including ones that leverage generative AI.

Copilot Studio will enable users to create impactful conversational AI experiences and drive business outcomes. Users can now leverage Copilot Studio to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365, included in the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.

• Blog: Learn more about Microsoft Copilot Studio .
• Blog: Learn more about updates to Microsoft 365 .

5.9. Microsoft Viva

5.9.1. viva and microsoft 365 chat integration, and copilot in viva updates.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 enhanced with Microsoft Viva will provide AI-powered assistance for employee experience. Copilot will work across Viva data and applications as a single interface to guide employees, managers and HR leaders with self-service insights and experiences such as understanding team health, setting new priorities with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) or upskilling for career growth.

This new integration will be available for customers who have deployed both Copilot for Microsoft 365 and the Viva suite and will be in private preview early next year.

Additionally, updates to Copilot experiences in Viva apps will help organizations better understand and engage with their workforce to improve performance and include:

• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Insights will enable leaders and their delegates to use natural language prompts to generate personalized, dynamic reports that answer questions about their teams and organization, and will simplify the query building process for analysts. This Copilot will be in preview early next year.
• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Goals will enable users to easily generate and refine goals with conversational AI and from existing strategy documents, as well as summarize goal progress to share with and across teams. This Copilot will be in preview in December 2023.
• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Engage will help inspire leaders and employees to post using AI-created conversation starters, prompts and images. It will also give leaders insight into employee sentiment, cultivate an environment of trust by tailoring and refining message tone and enhance the quality of questions being asked with suggested prompts. This Copilot will be in preview in January 2024.
• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Learning will allow users to easily create structured learning collections, find the right learning resources and summarize learning content using conversational AI. This Copilot will be in private preview for joint Viva and SAP SuccessFactors customers by the end of 2023.
• Copilot in Microsoft Viva Glint will enable leaders to summarize and analyze thousands of employee comments from employee engagement surveys and provide a fresh way to explore feedback by asking questions through natural language. This Copilot will be available for private preview in January 2024.

Additionally, see here for details around a new dashboard from Viva Insights that provides leaders and organizations visibility into Microsoft Copilot adoption and impact.

• See also: 5.8.3. Introducing Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin in private preview
• Breakout: Drive engagement and performance with Microsoft Viva

5.10. Power Platform

5.10.1. new experiences for copilot in power automate.

Microsoft is announcing new Copilot experiences in Power Automate for developers and orchestrators. With these new releases, Copilot in Microsoft Power Automate will span process mining, API automation, robotic process automation (RPA) and orchestration.

These new experiences, in preview, will enable users to discover and create UI and API automation faster, while streamlining productivity and insights into how they are run and managed and include:

• Using Copilot to assist with desktop flows: Copilot will be integrated into the Console and the Designer of Power Automate for desktop. Copilot will assist with desktop flows (RPA) by typing questions and getting relevant information and step-by-step instructions from documentation. Additionally, users will be able to generate scripts by describing what to do, and code will be automatically generated.
• Using Copilot to analyze automation activity: Admins, Center of Excellence (CoE) teams and business users and makers with access to flow run histories will be able to query past runs in natural language across their environment.
• Breakout: Improve Efficiency with Power Automate Process Mining and RPA
• Demo: Drive process optimization with Copilot in process mining
• Demo: New features in Power Automate desktop designer
• Discussion: Enabling your Automation CoE to Modernize with Power Automate Q&A
• Discussion: How Process Mining can drive business efficiency in various industries Q&A

5.10.2. Power Apps continues to advance IT governance, Copilot and modern experiences in app development

Power Apps gives developers tools to rapidly build modern, high-performing AI-powered apps for enterprise. AI implementation through Copilot, prebuilt templates and drag-and-drop simplicity allow everyone to do more with less. Extensibility through integrations enables professional developers to build without limits. As part of Microsoft Power Platform, Power Apps benefits from advanced security and governance in place, making it easy to deploy and govern at massive scale.

New features and updates for Power Platform include:

Advanced governance features in Managed Environments for Power Platform

• Groups and rules will empower IT admins to control their Power Platform environments at enterprise scale. Environment groups will allow admins to categorize their environments into group, and rule sets will allow admins to define a dedicated configuration for each of their environment groups. With groups and rules, admins will get more control with less effort. This feature is in limited preview, with preview planned for the end of the first quarter of 2024.
• Advisor in Managed Environments for Power Platform will provide IT with proactive recommendations and inline actions to govern and secure the platform more easily. This will include recommendations to clean up unused apps, lock down over-shared apps and add owners to abandoned apps. This feature is in preview.

Features to further accelerate building of Copilot-enabled apps

• Copilot for app users as sidecar is now ready for every user in the web player canvas app backed by Dataverse. Copilot will automatically work with the data in the app and provide users with insights and answers, without needing to set up from app makers. This is the easiest way to give the power of generative AI to users. This feature is coming to limited preview in mid-December and preview end of the first quarter of 2024.
• Makers can now also greatly extend and customize Copilot for app users embedded in apps through Copilot control. Microsoft Copilot Studio interoperability enables extensive customization that brings capabilities of Copilot Studio into every Copilot-embedded app. This feature will be in preview in the first half of 2024.
• For existing apps that are in managed environments and are missing their description, AI-generated app descriptions will be added automatically. For any new apps, when the makers are publishing, a draft of the app description will be presented for them. App descriptions will help end users find useful apps and IT admins understand their app landscape. This feature is in preview.

Making the creation of high-performing modern apps even easier

• Mobile native UI/UX: Mobile Power Apps will have native UI/UXwith smoother animations, faster performance and modern mobile interaction patterns. The improved performance and modern functionality will bring efficiency gains to everyone running apps on mobile devices, especially those executing high-volume actions. This update is in preview.
• With modern controls generally available and theming in canvas apps, makers will be able to easily create elegant, accessible, fast and reliable apps. This will cut down the need to write complicated files for usual scenarios and will accelerate development. This update is in preview.
• See also: 5.8.4. Introducing Microsoft Copilot Studio
• Breakout: Operating Power Platform at Enterprise scale
• Discussion: Generative AI for low code development Q&A

5.10.3. Power Virtual Agents is now part of Microsoft Copilot Studio

Introducing Microsoft Copilot Studio, built on the foundations of Power Virtual Agents and the broader Microsoft conversational AI ecosystem. Copilot Studio provides new ways to build copilots and extend Microsoft Copilot with the latest generative AI capabilities. With Power Virtual Agents capabilities joining Copilot Studio, the Power Virtual Agents name will no longer be used. Existing PVA customers will access the same capabilities, all within Microsoft Copilot Studio.

• Breakout: Revolutionize the way you develop conversational AI
• Demo: How to build your own copilot with Microsoft Copilot Studio

5.11. Security Copilot

5.11.1. microsoft purview capabilities in microsoft security copilot and embedding the security copilot experience in microsoft purview solutions.

Microsoft Security Copilot will be embedded into Microsoft Purview. Data security admins receive an average of more than 50 alerts per day and can only get to fewer than 60 to 70 percent of them . Likewise, compliance admins spend 60 percent of their time reviewing evidence collected in review sets. Additionally, there is also a steep learning curve from entry-level analysts to expert-level analysts to assess and remediate risks.

With Security Copilot embedded in Purview, customers will be able to quickly generate a comprehensive summary of alerts and information to accelerate investigation and response, upskill talent via guided responses to navigate through information efficiently and use natural language to define search queries in eDiscovery to enable faster and more accurate search iterations by eliminating the need to use keyword query language. Embedded scenarios will be surfaced in Data Loss Prevention, Insider Risk Management and eDiscovery and Communication Compliance.

• Breakout: Secure and govern your data with Microsoft Purview
• Breakout: Beyond traditional DLP: Comprehensive and AI-powered data security
• Demo: Microsoft Security Copilot: Going Beyond Security Operations
• Pre-recorded: Accelerate risk assessment and incident investigation with AI

5.11.2. Microsoft Security Copilot embedded experience in private preview

The Microsoft Security Copilot embedded experience, available in private preview, will allow IT admins and security analysts to use Microsoft Security Copilot within the Microsoft Intune admin center. Integrating insights and data from security and management tools, Security Copilot provides customized guidance through generative AI to address an organization’s specific requirements, like intelligent policy creation and deployment and faster, easier troubleshooting.

These new endpoint management and security capabilities will be available in Intune, joining the existing security incidence investigation and device security posture improvement experiences currently available in the Early Access Program for Security Copilot capabilities.

• Breakout: Fortified security and simplicity come together with Microsoft Intune
• Breakout: Modern management innovation shaping endpoint security
• Breakout: Scaling AI across your business with Windows and Windows 365

5.11.3. New auditing capabilities within Microsoft Purview Audit for Copilot interactions

With this new feature, in preview, Microsoft Purview Audit consumers will be able to measure and track when users request assistance from Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and see the list of assets that were affected when responding to the request. These signals will enable security investigators to determine when content, such as files with sensitive data, were touched during a Copilot for Microsoft 365 interaction.

5.11.4. Security Copilot coming to Microsoft Entra to assist in investigating risks, troubleshooting

Microsoft Security Copilot will also be embedded in Microsoft Entra to assist in investigating identity risks and helping with troubleshooting daily identity tasks, such as why a sign-in required multi-factor authentication. IT admins can ask about users, groups, sign-ins and permissions and instantly get a risk summary, steps to remediate and recommended guidance for each identity at risk, in natural language. Additionally, in Microsoft Entra ID Governance, admins can use Security Copilot to guide in the creation of a lifecycle workflow to streamline the process of creating and issuing user credentials and access rights.

• Breakout: Secure access in the AI era: What’s new in Microsoft Entra
• Breakout: Accelerate your Zero Trust journey with unified access controls

5.11.5. Security Copilot will deliver unified solutions across services, data

Security has always been a notoriously siloed and fragmented function – both from a technological and organizational point of view. Microsoft Security Copilot will help transcend technological and talent boundaries by delivering a unified, efficient and intuitive experience for all professionals that secure organizations, including identity management, device management, data security and compliance professionals.

With the addition of these new scenarios, all in private preview, Microsoft’s customers who rely on our industry-leading Microsoft Entra, Purview, Intune and Sentinel solutions will be able to integrate Security Copilot into their routine tasks and workflows and use Security Copilot to assist in many ways, including:

Identity management (Microsoft Entra): Entra skills are now available in Security Copilot to enable security analysts to discover high-risk users, overprivileged access and suspicious sign-ins that aid in a security incident investigation and assess potential risk.

Device management (Microsoft Intune): New features enable IT admins to generate device policies and simulate their outcomes, gather device information for forensics and configure devices with best practices from similar deployments.

Data protection and compliance (Microsoft Purview): New skills for data protection, compliance and risk management identify data impacted by incidents, generate a summary of data and user risks, analyze documents and surface risks of collusion, fraud and sabotage.

Cloud security posture management (Microsoft Defender EASM and Defender for Cloud): New skills for posture management simplify external attack surface risk assessment and enable security admins to manage cloud security posture more efficiently. Security admins can quickly discover potential attack paths using natural language queries, get mitigation guidance for proactive prevention of threats and receive automatic notification for resource owners.

Embedded experience in the unified SIEM+XDR UX (Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel): For the first time, the generative AI capabilities of Security Copilot are available in Microsoft’s unified experience across the award-winning Microsoft Defender XDR and Sentinel solutions, accelerating incident response with guided investigation, rapid aggregation of evidence across numerous data sources and advanced capabilities such as malware analysis.

• Keynote: The Future of Security with AI
• Breakout: Microsoft Sentinel: A modern approach to security operations
• Breakout: Security for AI: Discover, protect, and prepare in the AI era
• Breakout: Unifying XDR + SIEM: A new era in SecOps

6. Power Platform 6.1. Power Platform

6.1.1. payment processing in power pages in preview.

Payment processing integration , now in preview in Microsoft Power Pages, will enable makers to easily embed payment processing directly into their websites.

Payment processing platforms power online payment processing and commerce solutions. This unlocks a new use case for Power Pages – building websites that support payment processing – as makers will be able to use Power Pages to develop websites that accept payment from customers. For example, state and local governments will be able to process licensing fees, application fees and permitting fee payments through their Power Pages websites.

• Breakout: Build secure web apps and connect data faster with Power Pages

7. Security 7.1. Defender

7.1.1. microsoft updates help evolve the security operations center experience.

Several key updates across Microsoft’s suite of security solutions are designed to help Security Operations Center (SOC) professionals operate more efficiently and better protect their assets and data. These updates include:

Announcing Microsoft Defender XDR: Microsoft Defender 365 is now Microsoft Defender XDR. The new name best represents Microsoft’s extended detection and response (XDR) capabilities that span beyond products included in the Microsoft 365 suite. The native security solutions protect devices across Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS, as well as multicloud environments spanning Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This update is generally available.

Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel combine as a unified security operations platform: The unification of Defender XDR and Sentinel into a single, powerful user experience along with the addition of Microsoft Security Copilot generative AI will change how customers manage their security operations and protect their assets and data. Customers will have a high level of efficiency and ease of use with a single experience for their security operations tools. This will mean less clicking, less context switching and less training for more robust insights. With the integration of cutting-edge AI and automation technologies, defenders will be able to level up their skills with guided response across first- and third-party data sets. This update is in private preview.

Embedded Microsoft Security Copilot: Customers using the unified SOC platform will be able to access the benefits of an embedded generative AI tool that will help analysts to level up their security information and event management (SIEM) and XDR skills. Security Copilot will help by using natural language to write keyword query language (KQL) queries, understand malicious scripts, create incident summaries and provide support throughout the investigation and remediation process. This update is in early access.

Optimize data in the SIEM with SOC optimizations: This new feature will support SOCs in ensuring they are maximizing the value of the data they are ingesting into Sentinel with recommendations that will help them to save money, improve coverage and better secure themselves against specific threats. This feature is in private preview.

Improved response to user assets and cloud workloads: Integration of cloud workload alerts, signals and asset information from Microsoft Defender Cloud into the industry-leading XDR platform will help security teams combat cross-domain attacks more effectively. This powerful integration will provide SOC analysts with a holistic view, spanning workspace and cloud infrastructure, plus rich contextual insights to uncover the entire attack story in a single incident. This will protect organizations against advanced attacks with efficiency and speed. This update is in preview.

Auto-deployed decoys: Will provide early-stage, high-fidelity signals that force adversaries to be correct 100 percent of the time with built-in deception techniques harnessing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s unique visibility into organizations and OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative AI model. Users will be able to automatically generate and disperse decoys and lures at scale that resemble real users and assets in the organization. This will allow SOC teams to detect and focus on attacks even more effectively. This update is in preview.

Protection of AI apps within an organization: A set of new capabilities across Microsoft Defender and Microsoft Purview will help defenders securely prepare for the new wave of AI and empower their organizations, while keeping their data and other assets secure. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps will extend its discovery capabilities to support over 400 large language model apps. Additionally, Purview Data Loss Prevention will help organizations create policies that prevent their users from pasting sensitive data to specific websites. This update is in preview.

• Blog: Learn more about the unification of Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel .
• Blog: Learn more about updates to Microsoft Defender XDR .
• Blog: Learn more about updates to Microsoft Sentinel .
• Blog: Learn more about updates to Microsoft Security .
• Breakout: Hello unification: A new era in SecOps
• Breakout: Security for AI: Prepare, protect, and defend in the AI era
• Demo: Getting started with Microsoft Sentinel
• Demo: Protect more with Microsoft Sentinel and 365 Defender together

7.1.2. New features for Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps organizations protect multicloud and hybrid environments with comprehensive security across the full lifecycle, from development to runtime. Several key updates will help security admins adopt a comprehensive cloud-native application protection strategy and improve security posture across multicloud environments and DevOps platforms and include:

• Unify identity and access permissions insights to improve cloud security posture through integration with Microsoft Entra Permissions Management : Security admins will get a centralized view of Permissions Creep Index, drive least privilege access controls for cloud resources and get proactive attack path analysis that connect the dots between access permissions to other potential vulnerabilities across Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud. This update is in preview.
• DevOps security insights across GitHub, Azure DevOps and GitLab : Security admins will get deep visibility into their application security posture across GitHub, Azure DevOps and GitLab within Defender for Cloud now in preview. In addition to GitHub Advanced Security and GitHub Advanced Security for Azure DevOps, with the preview of the GitLab Ultimate integration, Defender for Cloud will now support the three major developer platforms.
• Improved container security across multicloud environments : Security admins will be able to get ahead of containerized application risks and prioritize misconfigurations and exposures in their Kubernetes deployments with the expansion of Defender Cloud Security Posture Management’s (CSPM) contextual graph-based capabilities to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters. This update will be in preview soon.
• Enable proactive attack path analysis across clouds and faster risk mitigation : Security admins will be able to reduce recommendation fatigue and efficiently remediate critical risks with a risk-based recommendation enhanced attack path analysis engine to identify and prioritize remediation of more complex risks such as cross-cloud attack paths. New code-to-cloud mapping will also enable security admins to rapidly accelerate the time and effort to address critical security flaws right in the code itself. Additionally, the new ServiceNow integration will enable admins to use their existing system to automate or drive mitigation of risks. This update is in preview.
• Improved API security posture: With the general availability of Defender for APIs plan in Defender for Cloud, security admins can gain visibility of business-critical APIs, prioritize vulnerability fixes and quickly detect active real-time threats for APIs published in Azure API Management. New preview capabilities targeting sensitive data classification powered by Microsoft Purview and curated attack paths will help security admins further safeguard data from API risks.
• Microsoft Security Copilot in Defender for Cloud : Security admins will be able to gain efficiency in discovering and remediating risks with the power of AI-generated guidance. Security admins will be able to easily identify risks and vulnerabilities across their cloud environment using natural language questions. This feature is in private preview.
• Blog: Announcing new CNAPP capabilities in Defender for Cloud
• Breakout: Boost multicloud security with a comprehensive code to cloud strategy
• Demo: Protecting multicloud resources with code-to-cloud CNAPP

7.2.1. Microsoft Entra Permissions Management adding more integrations

The integration of Microsoft Entra Permissions Management with Microsoft Defender for Cloud (MDC), now in preview, will provide an efficient way to consolidate insights into other cloud security posture information on a single interface. Customers will receive actionable recommendations for addressing permissions risks in the MDC dashboard and gain a centralized view of the Permissions Creep Index, facilitating the enforcement of least privilege access for cloud resources across Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Another integration is with ServiceNow, one of the most popular IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions. Through this integration, customers can request time-bound, on-demand permissions for multicloud environments, such as Azure, AWS and GCP, via the ServiceNow portal. This integration helps organizations enhance their Zero Trust posture by enforcing the principle of least privilege for multicloud permissions and streamlines access permission requests within existing approval workflows.

These updates are now generally available.

• Blog: Identity at Microsoft Ignite: Securing access in the era of AI .
• Product roundtable: Build the Future of your Multicloud Access with Microsoft Entra

7.2.2. Microsoft’s Security Service Edge expands Internet Access and Private Access preview

Microsoft’s Security Service Edge (SSE) solution secures access to any app or resource from anywhere and includes Microsoft Entra Internet Access (Internet Access) and Microsoft Entra Private Access (Private Access). Internet Access will expand its preview to include context-aware Secure Web Gateway (SWG) capabilities for all internet apps and resources. The extended preview of capabilities for Private Access will help make Private Access fully ready for traditional VPN replacement.

Internet Access capabilities, coming soon to preview, include:

• Universal Conditional Access for any internet endpoint from managed devices and networks. By managing all access policies in one place, users will be able to extend adaptive access controls universally to rely on Conditional Access to any network destination, like an external website or non-federated SaaS applications – without the need to change these applications.
• Token theft protection for Entra ID apps through compliant network check-in Conditional Access. With this control, users will be able to protect Entra-integrated cloud applications against token theft and ensure users do not bypass network security policies specific to their tenant while accessing critical cloud services.
• Source IP restoration in Identity Protection and Conditional Access location policies. Internet Access will offer differentiated backward compatibility of trusted location checks in Conditional Access and continuous access evaluation, identity risk detection and logging, by ensuring the users’ original source IP is maintained.
• Context aware SWG will restrict user access to unsafe and non-compliant content with web content filtering (URL, FQDN, web category) and make internet filtering policies more succinct, readable and comprehensive by leveraging the rich user, device and location awareness of Conditional Access.
• Improved security, visibility and user experience for Microsoft 365 will include data exfiltration protection through universal tenant restriction and prevents anonymous access for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. This capability will provide great performance and resiliency for Microsoft 365 applications and flexible deployment options for Microsoft 365 scenarios with third-party SSE vendors.

Private Access capabilities, in preview, include:

• VPN replacement: Extended protocol support for private app access and, in addition to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP) support along with private Domain Name System (DNS) support will be provided. These enhancements will enable customers to seamlessly transition from their traditional Virtual Private Network (VPN) deployments to a fully ready, identity-centric Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution.
• Multifactor authentication ( MFA) to all on-premises apps: Private Access will provide Conditional Access controls and modern authentication methods, such as MFA, to secure access to all private applications and resources. This will apply to any application, located anywhere, for both remote and on-premises users.

Both Internet Access and Private Access have cross-OS clients (Windows, Android, MacOS, iOS) and increased global presence with more points of presence (POPs).

• Blog: Identity at Microsoft Ignite: Securing access in the era of AI
• Discussion: Microsoft’s Security Service Edge (SSE) solution Q&A
• Demo: Microsoft’s Security Service Edge (SSE) Solution in action
• Product roundtable: Share your feedback on Microsoft’s Security Service Edge solution

7.2.3. Updates for Microsoft Entra ID now generally available

Microsoft Entra ID is an identity and access management solution that connects employees, customers and partners to their apps, devices and data for hybrid and multicloud environments. The following updates are now generally available.

Microsoft managed Conditional Access policies : Microsoft will begin to automatically enroll customers into Conditional Access policies based on their risk signals, current usage and licensing. The policies will enhance the security posture and reduce the complexity of managing Conditional Access.

Microsoft Entra Certificate-Based Authentication (CBA): Microsoft Entra CBA now offers several new features to improve the security posture of customers. These enhancements enable customers to customize authentication policies based on certificates, resource type and user group. Customers now have more control and flexibility to choose certificate strength for different users, combine CBA with other methods for multifactor or step-up authentication and configure authentication strength either tenant wide or by user group.

In addition, in early 2024, Microsoft Entra ID users will be able to sign in with passkeys managed by the Microsoft Authenticator app . By using passkeys, customers will have an additional phishing-resistant credential based on open standards and will ensure access to the latest security enhancements that will be added to the FIDO standard in the coming years.

7.3. Purview

7.3.1. enriched, high-fidelity security alerts to empower data security teams in preview.

Several key updates, now in preview, will help data security teams manage critical insider risks and include:

Enrich DLP incident management with insider risk insights: Traditional Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions generate alerts when certain conditions are met, such as when a user copies confidential files to a USB device. However, these alerts typically only highlight the specific incident and files impacted, without providing context about where the files originated or what other actions the user took.

With a new feature powered by Insider Risk Management, DLP alerts will be enriched with user context, allowing DLP analysts and security operations center (SOC) analysts, with appropriate permissions, to see a summary of past user activities that may have led to potential data security incidents. This is all part of the incident management experience in Microsoft Purview and Microsoft Defender.

For example, with this feature, the abovementioned DLP alert will now contain a summary of the critical sequence of actions taken by the user, showing that they downloaded confidential files from SharePoint, downgraded the sensitivity label and compressed the files into a zip file before exfiltrating them to the USB device. With this context, analysts will be able to better understand the user’s intent and determine whether they were trying to exfiltrate sensitive data while evading detection. This feature will help analysts gain a better understanding of a DLP incident and make faster, more informed decisions on how to respond to potential incidents.

Support administrative units in Insider Risk Management: Different departments or geographic locations may have varying policies or preferences for managing insider risks. Regional regulations may also necessitate distinct designs or processes for implementing insider risk programs. To accommodate these needs, Insider Risk Management will support administrative units. This feature will allow admins with the appropriate permissions to subdivide the organization into smaller units and assign specific admins or role groups to manage only the members of those units. For instance, German insider risk admins can create and manage policies exclusively for German users, while German insider risk investigators can investigate alerts and activities solely from German users.

Get more high-fidelity alerts with recommended policy tuning: When instruments are finely tuned, music can be played smoothly. Similarly, data security solutions can be more effective and powerful when policy configurations are optimized. However, reaching an optimal stage can be time-consuming, as admins may need to experiment with different configurations, and each iteration can take several days to yield results. To address this challenge, Insider Risk Management will provide recommendations and sensitivity analysis to help admins set policy thresholds for certain user activities based on real-time analytics. This feature will save security teams time in fine-tuning policies and enable them to receive an optimal volume of high-fidelity alerts more quickly.

• Blog: Empower data security teams to proactively manage critical insider risks across diverse digital esta

7.3.2. Incident investigation, eDiscovery capabilities added to Microsoft Purview

With Microsoft Purview eDiscovery incident investigation experience , users can accelerate incident investigations by harnessing incident parameters to know where to look for the exact evidence required to assess and mitigate incident risk.

Users will be able to explore incident insights to further understand blast radius and risk levels, mitigate incidents with comprehensive actions to expand the investigation, invite collaboration with investigation stakeholders and manage the evidence to resolve the investigation. This feature is in preview.

With the integration of Microsoft Security Copilot into eDiscovery, users will be able to set natural, language-based queries to find and collect potentially relevant content for investigations. This will ease the burden of using complex queries to search and find content, help identify the relevant source locations and simplify the time-consuming validation of search criteria and results. The power of Copilot will be used to summarize threads, files and content sets within an investigation. Users will be able to act based on the extracted insights to further accelerate the pace of investigation and review. This feature is in preview.

• Blog: The Next Era of eDiscovery: Embracing Advanced Capabilities for a Comprehensive Digital Landscape

7.3.3. New capabilities in Purview Data Loss Prevention

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a cloud-native solution that proactively prevents accidental or unauthorized loss of sensitive data across apps, services and devices.

Several new capabilities in Purview DLP will help organizations comprehensively protect sensitive data loss, including expanding protections across Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms, providing additional protection capabilities, as well as additional features that can help DLP and Security Operations Center (SOC) admins be efficient in their day-to-day tasks.

These updates fall under several categories:

Expanding the breadth of protection

• DLP support for Windows on Arm will let customers extend Microsoft Endpoint DLP policies and actions to endpoints running Windows on Arm. This will allow them to detect and protect sensitive data in files within their digital ecosystem. This update is in preview.
• Enhancement of DLP capabilities on macOS endpoints , including the ability to create groups of printers, USBs, network shares and sensitive service domains and apply different restrictions to each group, with the ability to apply the most restrictive action against multiple DLP rules. This update is generally available.

Expanding the depth of protection

• Just-in-time protection for endpoint DLP that restricts activity at the time of egress is generally available.
• Performance improvements for enforcing restrictions on sensitive content shared over Microsoft Teams Chat are generally available.

Empowering admins to be efficient

• Enriching DLP alerts with user insights from Purview Insider Risk Management will bring in the user context within the DLP alert for efficient investigations. This update is in preview.
• The ability to store original files, resulting in a DLP policy match as evidence for investigations. This update is in preview.
• Richer filter for DLP alerts in Microsoft 365 Defender, including file name, file path and latency, helping admins get more out of the alerts. This update is in preview.
• Simulation mode for DLP policies to enable admins to try a Microsoft Purview DLP policy, assess its impact and fine-tune the policy as required in an isolated environment. This will help admins build confidence in the configuration of the policy and reduce the policy enforcement time. This update is in preview.
• DLP recommendations for highlighting current risks in the organization’s environment, quick policy setup to mitigate the risk and policy fine-tuning to make existing policies better and reduce noise. This update is generally available.
• Support for admin units for DLP alerts in Microsoft 365 Defender is generally available.
• Blog: Gain comprehensive data protection and efficient investigation with Microsoft Purview DLP

7.3.4. New features for Microsoft Communication Compliance

Microsoft is introducing cutting-edge AI and Microsoft Security Copilot capabilities to bolster Microsoft Communication Compliance. These advanced features will leverage AI and Security Copilot technology to improve the detection and management of compliance issues in communication. This marks a significant step forward in ensuring organizations can harness the power of AI to maintain secure, productive and accountable communication while staying compliant with regulations. These updates include:

• Communication Compliance document and alert summaries with Security Copilot : This embedded Copilot experience will simplify communication policy matches, offering contextual summaries, conversation evaluation, risk network identification and intelligent triage. This combination will enhance data security and compliance measures for organizations. This update is in private preview.
• Microsoft Teams compliant meetings: Users can leverage voice-to-text machine learning to convert Teams meeting recordings to text, analyze transcripts for potential risky content and display video snippets of policy matches to facilitate triage. This update is generally available.
• Microsoft Viva Engage message reporting : Microsoft Viva Engage users are empowered to report inappropriate or concerning posts and comments within Viva Engage conversations. Reported messages then get triaged within Communication Compliance. This update is generally available.
• Next-generation business conduct detection: Using Azure AI Content Safety, new detections are being added to Communication Compliance that will enable teams to build safer online environments by detecting potential violence, hate, sexual and self-harm content, then assigning severity scores to unsafe text across languages. These classifiers are built using large language models. This update is in preview.
• Blog: Unleash the Future of Communication Compliance at Microsoft Ignite 2023

7.3.5. New features in Purview Information Protection now generally available

Microsoft Purview Information Protection helps organizations understand what data is sensitive and business critical and then how manage and protect it. New features that are now generally available include:

New contextual predicates in service-side auto-labeling: This is a novel way of auto-classification based on document properties, such as the type of file (file extension), size, who the document was created by and if the document name contains certain words or phrases. This enables organizations to intelligently discover and label groups of documents which, according to these contextual predicates, may contain sensitive data.

Auto labeling (for files at rest in SharePoint Online) can now label PDF files: Auto labeling for files at rest in SharePoint Online will automatically start labeling PDF files, a widely used file type, in addition to currently supported Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

Application of a default sensitivity label for a SharePoint document library: With this update, all newly uploaded documents to a document library can inherit the configured label for the document library (if not already labeled). All documents, either newly created or modified, in that library will be automatically assigned with that library’s label. Site default labels allow users to protect all documents because the library itself is sensitive – without needing to define classification policies.

Secure collaboration on labeled and encrypted documents with user-defined permissions: With user-defined permissions, document owners no longer need admins to create special labels for their highly confidential documents. Instead, they can specify the permissions themselves by applying user-defined permissions (UDP) labels on files. UDP-labeled files in SharePoint support co-authoring. This capability is very popular with C-Suite users and users working on tented projects who need to limit access to highly confidential documents to a small set of explicitly authorized individuals that they select.

Sensitivity labels to protect Microsoft Teams shared channels: This release is about safeguarding the confidentiality of Teams channels by enabling users to discover private teams that they weren’t able to previously view and/or join. Shared channel access controls enable users to apply settings, such as internal only, same team only or private team only on shared channels to better secure confidential information.

Microsoft Fabric support for sensitivity labels: Fabric support for sensitivity labels follow the data automatically as it flows from the lakehouse to Power BI reports, Microsoft 365 files and other assets business users rely on every day, for end-to-end, comprehensive protection.

Configure policy tips as popups for labeled emails and attachments: Admins can now configure data loss protection (DLP) rules that display warnings in pop-up dialogs before users send emails. This makes it more difficult for users to inadvertently overshare or send emails to external users who aren’t authorized according to their organization’s policies. Admins can set up rules to provide warnings only, block actions entirely, require business justification or request explicit acknowledgements before sending emails.

Double-key encryption to protect sensitive files and emails in Microsoft 365 apps on Windows: To protect the most sensitive content, users of Microsoft 365 apps can now use Double Key Encryption (DKE) for files and emails with built-in labeling in Office. With DKE, Microsoft stores one key in Microsoft Azure and the user holds the other key, so that only the user can ever decrypt protected content. Sensitivity labels configured with DKE in Purview Compliance portal are now available for users in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook to publish or consume content protected with DKE.

Tracking and revocation in Compliance portal: The tracking and revocation feature enables users to check who has tried accessing their sensitivity labeled and encrypted Office files and revoke access when needed.

In addition, users will be able to e xtend sensitivity labels to assets in Azure , now in gated preview. With Purview, users will be able to extend the reach of Information Protection sensitivity labels and the value from built-in sensitive information types to a much broader set of data locations and data types. Users will be able to work with existing sensitivity labels or create new ones via the Purview compliance portal to extend security and compliance intent to data assets in Azure.

• Blog: Insightful and intelligent classification and protection are key to data security
• Pre-recorded: How Microsoft Purview helps you protect your data
• Product roundtable: Understand your risk and protect your most sensitive data

7.3.6. Secure data in the AI era with Microsoft Purview

Microsoft Purview can help secure data in AI and help organizations adopt AI, including Microsoft Copilots and non-Microsoft AI applications. These capabilities can provide organizations:

• Visibility into the risks associated with sensitive data usage and user activity context in AI applications in their environment.
• Comprehensive protection with ready-to-use policies to prevent sensitive data loss in AI.
• Compliance controls to help easily meet business and regulatory requirements and detect code of conduct and business violations.

Purview capabilities will be integrated with Microsoft Copilots, starting with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 integrations, which are now generally available. With Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers will be able to:

• Discover data security risks, including sensitive data shared with Copilot and risky use of Copilot.
• See Copilot honoring Purview Information Protection sensitivity label access restrictions, inheriting sensitivity labels from referenced files and citing sensitivity labels in responses.
• Capture Copilot prompts and responses as evidence in Purview Audit.
• Run content search in Purview eDiscovery.
• Manage retention and deletion policies for Copilot prompts and responses in Purview Data Lifecycle Management.
• Detect business and code of conduct violation in Copilot prompts and responses in Purview Communication Compliance.
• Blog: Securing data in an AI-first world with Microsoft Purview

7.3.7. Unified Microsoft Purview portal expands sphere of protection

Organizations must manage multiple solutions to help discover, protect and detect risks surrounding their most sensitive data. To help change the way organizations secure their data, Microsoft Purview is providing one unified Microsoft Purview portal, now in private preview, with these additional features:

Data visibility across all environments: Purview is expanding horizons and enabling visibility of sensitive data beyond Microsoft and into other clouds and applications, making it easier to track and store in a safe place.

Lifecycle protection: Organizations will be able to apply labels on sensitive data – just like they do for applications like Microsoft Outlook or Teams – but will be able to do so in databases, like SQL or other clouds like Amazon S3. This ensures the labels and sensitive information types can transfer across environments, ensuring a unified layer of protection.

Multicloud detection in Insider Risk Management: Data doesn’t move itself, it’s people who move and interact with data, and that’s where the majority of data security risks stem from. As users within organizations use multiple applications and cloud services in their day-to-day work, security teams must comprehend the risks associated with these user activities that may lead to potential data security incidents. Insider Risk Management will add detections in clouds like Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), as well as in applications like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and GitHub. Admins will be able to incorporate these multicloud detections in their data leak and data theft playbooks, making the insights more comprehensive.

• Pre-recorded: Protect your entire data estate across multiple clouds

8. Windows 8.1. Windows Commercial & Enterprise

8.1.1. new features coming to windows 365 and azure virtual desktop.

A host of new features for Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop include:

• Windows App , in preview, will be the place to connect to any devices or applications across Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktop, Remote Desktop Services, Microsoft Dev Box and more.
• Windows 365 GPU support , in preview, will make it ideal for workloads, such as graphic design, image and video rendering, 3D modeling, data processing and visualization applications.
• Windows 365 AI capabilities will help customers reduce costs, increase efficiency and further simplify security and management of Windows 365 Cloud PCs. One example will be applying AI to assess Cloud PC deployment and utilization to provide recommendations to help organizations better forecast and right-size their Cloud PC investment. This capability will be in preview in the coming months.
• Azure Virtual Desktop Autoscale for personal desktops is the Azure Virtual Desktop native scaling solution that automatically starts session host virtual machines (VMs) according to schedule or using Start VM on Connect. It then deallocates or hibernates session host VMs based on the user session state (log off/disconnect). The deallocating capability is now generally available, and hibernating session host VMs is in preview.
• Single-sign on (SSO) and passwordless authentication support for both Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop is now generally available for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365, along with third-party identity provider (IDP) support. Microsoft is also actively working on enabling the same capabilities for Azure Virtual Desktop approved providers.
• Windows 365 Customer Lockbox , in preview, will ensure that Microsoft support engineers can’t access content to do service operations without explicit approval.
• Windows 365 Custom Managed Keys will allow organizations to encrypt their Windows 365 Cloud PC disks utilizing their own encryption keys. This feature will be in preview soon.
• Watermarking, screen capture protection and tamper protection support for both Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop are now generally available, protecting against unauthorized access and manipulation of data, keeping sensitive information protected and maintaining organizational data integrity.
• Blog: Learn more about these updates
• Breakout: Scaling AI to every aspect of your business with Windows
• Demo: Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop: when, where, why, and how
• Discussion: Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop Q&A
• OnDemand: The Windows Cloud experience

8.1.2. Universal Print moves function to the cloud

The last workload to move to the cloud is print. Universal Print delivers a complete service integrated with all of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 to simplify print for employees and IT professionals.

With the added support for MacOS endpoints and an easy-to-use pull print functionality, in preview, employees will be able to securely and conveniently print on any corporate printer from anywhere and from any device. Now in preview, MacOS devices are fully supported through Universal Print. Users can print from any device or walk up to any corporate printer and securely release their print job, without having to choose the printer.

8.1.3. Windows Autopatch simplifies and automates update management for Windows

Microsoft is extending Windows Autopatch to PCs for frontline workers by adding Autopatch to the Microsoft 365 F3+ subscription. This long-awaited extension of the update management service is now generally available.

In addition, Windows Autopatch will become the unifying Windows update management solution for enterprise customers. The single solution for enterprise update management can be used as a fully automated managed service to deliver the highest cost savings, allowing customers to reallocate resources to higher-value areas. Used from within Microsoft Intune, Windows Autopatch becomes a do-it-yourself, partially automated service that delivers a high level of control. Windows Autopatch is the solution to update and upgrade Windows devices, Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Edge. Over time, Windows Update for Business deployment service will merge into the single service for enterprise customers.

Finally, Microsoft is adding firmware and driver update management granular controls to Windows Autopatch. This feature is now in private preview.

• Discussion: Windows 11, Windows 365, & Microsoft Intune Q&A

8.2. Windows Developer

8.2.1. introducing windows ai studio and new features for dev home and wsl.

Windows AI Studio for developers will simplify generative AI application development, bringing together cutting-edge AI tools and a model catalog. This will enable developers to fine-tune, customize and deploy small language models (SLMs) for local use in their Windows applications – all in one place.

Windows AI Studio , available in the coming weeks, will give developers greater choice to either run their models on the cloud on Azure or on the edge locally on Windows to meet their needs. And soon, Windows AI Studio will include prompt flow capabilities for prompt orchestration.

Dev Home with Azure Dev Ops (ADO) integration is now available in preview. Dev Home in Windows is a new feature that will help customers onboard new team members and projects faster through WinGet Configuration, in addition to managing projects and daily tasks with a customizable dashboard. An ADO extension , now available for Dev Home, helps enterprise developers easily clone their Azure repositories in Dev Home, manage ADO projects and stay on top of queries and relevant tasks from Dev Home.

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) has three new features targeted at enterprise-use cases that are generally available and include:

• A new plugin for WSL , released by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, which enables security teams to continuously monitor for events in all running distributions – delivering clear visibility into systems once considered a critical blind spot.
• New integrations with Microsoft Intune , which lets admins control access to WSL and its key security settings.
• Networking improvements that add additional security by enforcing the firewall rules on Windows to affect the WSL distributions and improved compatibility with VPNs and proxies in a corporate environment.
• Blog: Learn more about Windows Subsystem for Linux .
• Demo: Dev Home: Your new companion for productivity

U.N. plastic treaty talks grapple with re-use, recycle, reduce debate

• Greenpeace says not enough progress made
• Two more rounds of talks scheduled next year
• Proposal for intersessional work fails
• Plastics industry, oil producers oppose production curbs

NAIROBI, Nov 19 (Reuters) - A third round of United Nations negotiations to try to deliver the world's first treaty to control plastic pollution has drawn more than 500 proposals from governments, participants said on Sunday.

Negotiators, who spent a week meeting in the Kenyan capital at talks known as INC3, have until the end of next year to strike a deal for the control of plastics, which produce an estimated 400 million tonnes of waste every year.

The plastics industry, oil and petrochemical exporters, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, have said a global deal should promote recycling and re-use of plastic, but environmental campaigners and some governments say much less needs to be produced in the first place.

Environmental group Greenpeace said a successful deal would require the United States and the European Union to show greater leadership than they have so far.

"The hard truth is that INC3 has failed to deliver on its core objective: delivering a mandate to prepare a first draft of a treaty text," Graham Forbes, head of delegation for Greenpeace, said.

"This is not progress. This is chaos," he said referring to the number of submissions.

Two more rounds of talks will take place next year to try to finalise the deal. A proposal to hold an extra session before the next round in Canada, known as intersessional talks, failed to advance in the final plenary meeting, participants said.

Bethanie Carney Almroth, an eco-toxicologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was involved in the talks, said the world was confronting a huge challenge.

"Plastics are connected to climate change, to biodiversity loss and other major threats and crises that we as the human population are facing on the planet," she said.

A boy walks on a beach polluted by plastic trash in Bali, Indonesia, April 17, 2023. REUTERS/Ian Ransom Acquire Licensing Rights

There was no immediate comment from the United Nations.

LESS THAN 10% OF PLASTIC WASTE RECYCLED

Stewart Harris, a spokesman for the International Council of Chemicals Association, an industry body that favours measures like re-using plastic containers as opposed to production curbs, said the Nairobi talks had delivered good ideas.

A proposal by Switzerland and Uruguay to hold more discussions on curbing harmful polymers and chemicals of concern garnered support from more than 100 members states.

But some participants were disappointed by what they called the lack of a clear path towards an effective deal.

"Major fossil fuel producers and exporters stalled efforts to move forward in an efficient manner," said Tadesse Amera, co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), a global network of non-governmental organisations.

Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled, the U.N. Environment Programme says, while at least 14 million tonnes end up in oceans every year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature says.

Canada, Kenya, and the European Union were among those who said plastic production needed to be limited, while a coalition of Russia, Saudi Arabia and others has sought to emphasise recycling.

Members of the Saudi delegation at the talks declined to talk to Reuters, while Russian delegates could not immediately be reached for comment.

Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by George Obulutsa and Barbara Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Stellantis to lift revenue target for 'circular economy' recycling unit

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Free Corporate Video Production Proposal Template That Wins Clients

This proven proposal template won over $29,000,000 of business for our video production customers in 2022 alone. The text, images, colours, your logo - it's all 100% editable.

A look at everything in this Corporate Video Production Proposal Template

Visually stunning cover.

The first thing your client sees is a beautifully designed cover, fit for a world-class corporate video producer. If the cover doesn't impress them it's always going to be an uphill struggle from there. You can change the text, your logo, and the background image if you like - this gets you started.

Pre-Written Services Section

Writing about what you do is hard. How much is too much? Will the client understand it? Completely valid questions and ones you don't need to worry about now. In this corporate video production proposal template, the page detailing the work you're going to do is done, the structure is laid out. You just need to add a few client specifics when you use it.

Like with this entire proposal, it's all editable - the colors, the text, images, layout - everything.

Process and Timescales

Explaining the video production process can be difficult for people who haven't done it much before. You want to give enough detail but not so much it seems overwhelming. Fortunately, this has been battle-tested and is the perfect amount of information. You can tweak it to suit your exact process.

Case Study Example

The number of video makers that simply put examples of their work in their proposal templates is shocking. It's not enough. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to show that you understood the client's issues and came up with a solution that was successful.

In this corporate video production proposal template, we've set out an example case study. All you need to do is replace our example with one of yours and use the structure we've used.

Getting pricing right in the video production industry is difficult. In this automatically calculated pricing table, all you do is put the numbers in, type a quick 1-line description of the service and the quote part of your proposal is done. If you want to charge per hour, sell in quantities or have optional up-sell products, you can do that too.

Next Steps with Digital Signing

One of the biggest reasons businesses don't win work is they don't give clear instructions on how to buy from them. This proposal template comes with a 'Next Steps' page which you shouldn't need to alter at all. Simply detail the next steps your client will go through and ask them to sign digitally by typing their name and clicking Accept.

All digital signatures are 100% legal and compliant. When your client signs, you can see your digital signature certificate in your Better Proposals account.

Pre-Written Contract

Every service business needs a contract with its clients. The video production industry is no exception. We've scoured the world for experts to lend the contracts they use in their businesses for you to use.

We're not legal professionals and don't play them on the internet but if you're not using anything at all, this will likely be a great start - that said, get a legal professional to read it over.

Take Payment from Your Client

Getting paid - it's the hardest thing to do in business. The sooner and the easier you can get that money in your account the better. Using our integrations with Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless you can take payment from your client the moment they sign your proposal and then if needed, start a subscription.

Don't take just our word for it

Here is what some of our 10,000 users across the globe have to say

Sara K. CEO & Founder

Shade O. Business Owner

Brent R. Marketing and Advertising

150+ other free proposal templates just like these are also available inside Better Proposals

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As a marketer, you're probably great at branding yourself, and you want your marketing proposal to speak for you. This marketing services proposal has all the elements you’ll need, including a compelling social proof section.

This customizable cross promotion proposal template has all useful elements to push your potential clients one step closer to signing a deal with you. Use our cross promotion template to present your campaign, prices and more.

Automate your sales process with our 50+ integration partners

Import your contacts from a CRM, receive payments, chat with prospects and manage projects. All in once place. See all integrations

Your questions, answered

Common questions about plans, designs and security

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